4RLF 


6IFT  OP 
ROBEPCT 
DE1PHBR. 


THE 

STRUGGLE  FOR  BREAD: 

AH  IMPARTIAL  DISCUSSIOH 

OF 

SOME  OF  THE  WRONGFS  ani  RIGHTS  OF  CAPITAL  AHD  LABOR, 


TOGETHER   WITH 


An  Analysis  of  Industrial  Depressions  as  Related  to  the 
Present  Railway  System. 


A  GLANCE  AT  CO-OPERATIVE  PROFIT-SHARING,  AN  ANALY- 
SIS OF  HENRY  GEORGE'S  LAND  FALLACIES,  WITH 
THOUGHTS  ON  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  FUTURE 
OF  LABOR,  CONTAINING  NOTES  AND 
TABLES  ON  THE  SOCIAL  CONDI- 
TION OF  THE  PEOPLE. 


BY  LEIGH   H.    IRVINE,^ 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  IRON  HIGHWAY"    AND    "LABOR  PROBLEMS,"' 

, 

-     v 

PUBLISHERS: 
THE  MORNING  TIMES  COMPAQ 

OAKLAND.  ^£      ^        & 

THE    SAN    "RANCISCO    NEWS    COM^k&Y.   \ 

SAN  FRANCISCO.  ^^    ^     tj^  ^  I 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


COPYRIGHTED,  1889. 
By  LEIGH  H.  IRVINE. 

All  Rights  Reserved. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


[SEE  ALPHABETICAL  INDEX  AT  END  OF  BOOK.] 
CHAPTER.  PAGE. 

I.  BARONS  AND  BAREFEET,          ...      7 
II.  THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  WEALTH,    -        -         25 

III.  THE  RAILWAY  PROBLEM,         -        -        -47 

IV.  PRIVATE  OWNERSHIP  OF  LAND,          -         74 
V.  REVOLUTIONARY  THEORIES,     -        -        -    96 

VI.  MODERN  TRUSTS,        -        -        -        -        108 

VII.  THE  FUTURE  OF  LABOR,         -         -        -  116 

VIII.  UNIONS  AND  PKOFIT-SHARING,  -       130 

APPENDIX, 153 


PREFACE. 


THE  facts  and  figures  presented  to  the  reader  in  this 
little  volume  belong  to  eva-ybody.  It  would  be  as 
foolish,  therefore,  for  me  to  call  a  great  part  of  the  book 
original,  as  for  the  compiler  of  an  arithmetic  to  call 
the  multiplication  table  his  own  invention. 

I  have  simply  stated  somewell-known  truths  in  a 
popular  way,  for  I  do  not  pretend  to  be  a  specialist  in 
the  field  of  economics  and  social  science.  I  believe 
that  workingmen  in  overalls  should  know  just  such 
things  as  are  here  prepared  for  their  information. 
The  business  man  as  well  as  the  careful  student  will 
find,  in  the'  notes  and  throughout  the  text,  many  sta- 
tistics which  are  invaluable  in  the  study  of  the  so- 
called  labor  problem.  The  form  of  the  book  makes 
it  specially  convenient  for  pers  ms  who  want  a  manual 
of  reference  in  public  speaking.  I  cannot  close  with- 
out again  emphasizing  the  importance  of  the  notes. 
The  student  should  not  omit  to  read  them.  Sincerely, 

LEIGH  H.  IRVINE. 


CHAPTER  I. 
BARONS  AND  BAREFEET. 

INTRODUCTION. 

ABE  THE  EVILS  IMAGINARY  ? — THE  PAST — INCREASED 
COST  OF  LIVING — Is  THERE  WORK  FOR  ALL  ? — IN- 
DUSTRIAL DEPRESSIONS  DEFINED— HARD  TIMES  IN 
THE  UNITED  STATES  IN  1837,  1847,  1857,  1867,  1873, 
TO  1878,  AND  1882  TO  1887—1,000,000  IDLE  PEOPLE 
IN  1885 — AT  THE  THRESHOLD  OF  THE  PROBLEM. 

THE  American  Republic  stands  alone 
in  one  respect  in  the  world's  history. 
Nowhere  has  the  right  of  free  discussion 
of  public  questions  been  carried  to  the  ex- 
tent which  it  has  among  us.  Here  we 
are  free  to  peaceably  express  our  views  at 
all  times  on  men  and  measures,  subject 
always  to  the  law  against  libel  and  slan- 
der. From  the  country  debating  school 
to  the  workingmen's  union  and  the  politi- 
cal meeting,  there  may  be  found  every 
grade  of  opinion.  It  is  in  the  spirit  of  seri- 
ous inquiry  that  these  pages  are  written. 
I  have  no  wish  to  abuse  that  liberty 

(7) 


8  THE  STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

which  extends  to  me  the  right  to  discuss 
public  questions,  but  my  whole  desire  is 
to  present  the  truth  in  so  far  as  it  lies  in 
my  power  so  to  do. 

At  the  threshold  it  may  be  asked  what 
are  the  social  and  economic  questions  that 
demand  solution?  Do  the  strikes  and 
lockouts,  the  riots,  mobs,  and  industrial 
depressions  indicate  such  deep-rooted  dis- 
content as  presages  a  bloody  strife  be- 
tween capital  and  labor?  Is  it  necessary 
to  attack  the  foundations  of  our  Govern- 
ment to  reach  industrial  peace  and  safety, 
or  have  we  under  the  present  system 
such  resources  and  remedies  as  will  reach 
the  evil? 

These  are  some  of  the  problems  de- 
manding solution.  It  is  necessary  to  sur- 
vey the  signs  of  the  times.  At  the  outset, 
it  will  not  do  to  make  rash  assumptions  on 
either  side,  or  to  charge  all  of  our  evils  to 
the  foreigners  in  crowded  centers  who  have 
often  encouraged  discontent  and  strikes. 
It  would  be  unsafe  to  say  that  the  masses 
of  the  people  are  steadily  going  down, 


BARONS   AND   BAREFEET.  9 

tha.t  the  entire  poor  population  is  drifting 
to  ruin.  So  it  would  be  equal  folly  to  deny 
the  growth  of  trusts  and  other  evils  of 
monopoly,  for  the  people's  complaints 
against  them  can  no  longer  be  pushed 
aside  with  insolence  and  answered  with  a 
laugh.*  There  is  on  .the  other  hand  a 

*  In  the  catalogue  of  modern  evils  not  the  least 
harmful  is  the  growth  of  Nationalism  and  other  forms 
of  Socialism,  whose  inevitable  result  would  be  the 
overthrow  of  individuality,  and  the  despotism  of  gov- 
ernment so  admirably  portrayed  by  Herbert  Spencer. 
These  creeds  appeal  to  the  ignorant  masses  on  the  one 
side  and  to  theoretical  enthusiasts  on  the  other. 
In  an  age  when  the  wrongs  of  monopoly  are  numerous, 
and  when  the  rights  of  individuals  are  often  curtailed 
by  corrupt  combinations  of  the  money-power,  the  seeds 
of  Socialism  readily  take  root. 

The  rapid  growth  of  this  country  and  the  enormous 
aggregation  of  colossal  fortunes  have  overthrown  old 
methods.  The  present  is  an  era  so  different  from  the 
provincial  period  in  which  our  ancestors  lived,  that 
the  oft-heard  comparison  of  "old  times"  and  "old 
wages  "  with  the  present  can  no  longer  be  maintained. 
The  catalogue  of  expenditures  is  enlarged  on  every 
side,  while  the  production  of  wealth  and  its  distribu- 
tion are  wholly  unlike  anything  in  the  past. 

I  believe  that  the  coolest  thinkers  admit  that  there 
are  important  social  and  economic  questions  now  de- 


10  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

large  class  of  people  who  like  to  speak  of 
"the  good  old  times  of  the  long  ago/'  as  if 

manding  thoughtful  consideration,  and  questions,  too, 
almost  unknown  in  the  old  ages;  but  they  cannot  be 
solved  in  a  day.  Their  settlement  demands  patient 
investigation,  the  best  wisdom  of  honest  statesman- 
ship, and  a  constant  regard  for  the  rights  of  vested  in- 
terests. E  vils  that  attend  this  age  of  wonderful  pro- 
duction, and  that  involve  our  social  institutions  as 
well  as  the  culture  and  happiness  of  the  people,  cannot 
be  remedied  by  a  sudden  and  sweeping  revolution,  for 
it  is  an  old  truth  that  remedial  ju  stice  is  as  slow  in 
growth  and  adaptation  to  existing  conditions,  as  is 
the  growth  of  the  wrongs  against  which  it  is  directed. 
In  a  republic  such  as  ours  there  cannot  arise  the 
necessity  for  the  subjugation  of  all  wills  to  the  one 
tyrant  will  of  sovereignty,  for  that  is  the  relationship 
of  master  and  slave.  This  new  Nationalism  is  but  an- 
other name  for  old  Socialism,  and  it  would  destroy  the 
incentives  of  the  noblest  men.  It  would  rob  individ- 
uals of  their  motives  and  paralyze  the  vast  enterprises 
born  of  the  spirit  of  venture  and  individual  investiga- 
tion. 

Denison,  an  English  observer  and  worker,  incis- 
ively remarks  that  no  ballot,  nor  manhood  suffrage, 
nor  confiscation  of  property,  will  ever  make  an  igno- 
rant man  the  equal  of  an  educated  man.  No  political 
dodge  can  reverse  the  decrees  of  nature;  110  municipal 
law  can  abrogate  the  supremacy  of  mind,  nor  deliver 
brute  matter  from  its  eternal  subjection  to  it. 

In  an  address  before  the  American  Social  Science 


BARONS   AND   BAREFEET.  11 

flesh  and  blood  never  suffered  the  pangs  of 
poverty  and  oppression  in  the  past.  They 
forget  that  a  few  centuries  ago  kings  of 
the  Old  World  did  not  live  half  so  well 
as  artisans  of  to-day.  They  do  not  re- 
Association  at  Saratoga,  N".  Y.,  in  November,  1887,  F. 
J.  Kingsbury,of  Waterbury,  Vt.,  aptly  said:  "  I  am  old 
enough  to  remember  when  our  workingmen  and  work- 
ingwomen  were  our  native-born  population;  when  the 
manufacturer,  if  his  credit  was  good  enough,  fre- 
quently borrowed  his  capital  from  the  man  whom  he 
hired  as  a  workman,  who  preferred  his  fixed  days 
wages  to  the  risks  of  business,  but  was  very  glad  that 
some  one  else  was  willing  to  take  that  risk  and  to  give 
him  employment  and  interest  for  his  money;  when 
strikes  and  strikers  would  have  been  scouted  with 
contempt;  when  the  workman  was  a  MAN  or  woman, 
as  the  case  might  be,  who  had  his  own  plans  for  the 
present  and  future,  who  lived  in  his  own  house  and 
knew  what  to  do  with  his  man  ey.  He  had  read  in 
Poor  Richard's  Almanac,  *  Spend  one  penny  less 
each  day  than  thy  clear  gains,'  and  he  saw  the  point 
of  it.  Where  are  those  men  now  ?  They  and  their 
sons  are  the  capitalists,  and  financiers,  and  bankers, 
and  merchants,  and  clergymen,  and  professors,  and 
lawyers,  and  doctors  of  to-day;  and  the  women  are 
their  wives  and  mothers.  And  what  had  they  that 
the  present  generation  of  laborers  lack  ?  Only  three 
things,  and  they  are  these:  Industry,  Honesty, 
Thrift." 


12  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR    BREAD. 

member  that  a  hundred  years  ago  fire, 
and  light,  and  cooking  conveniences, 
were  almost  unknown  in  America;  that 
there  was  no  gas  or  coal;  that  spinning 
and  weaving,  threshing  and  reaping, 
were  unknown  arts;  that  pine  knots  and 
tallow  candles  were  fair  representatives  of 
the  destitution  and  poverty  of  the  times. 
In  those  old  days  they  had  their  special 
forms  of  poverty,  in  our  age  we  have  ours. 
Civilization  has  left  its  train  of  evils,  and 
while  the  masses  are  wealthier  and  wiser, 
longer-lived  and  happier  than  ever  before, 
it  is  doubtless  true  that  there  are  points 
of  contact  in  the  struggle  for  bread  where 
human  life  is  lost,  where  the  rudimentary 
instincts  of  barbarism  crop  out,  and  where 
men  slaughter  their  fellows  for  the  Al- 
mighty Dollar.  It  is  in  such  instances 
that  remedies  are  needed,  for  these  evils 
give  Socialism  a  leverage.  They  are  the 
food  upon  which  discontent  and  anarchy 
grow  fat. 

Industrial  depressions  have  afflicted  us 
in  America  about  every  ten  years  since 


BARONS   AND   BAREFEET.  13 

1837.  Some  thinkers  have  held  that  the 
'  sudden  multiplier  lion  of  our  wants  (or 
necessaries)  has  overtaxed  the  people,  and 
that  the  enormous  production  of  varieties 
of  food  and  clothing  which  were  unknown 
in  past  ages  has  made  the  masses  ex- 
travagant. It  is  true  that  the  amassing 
of  tremendous  private  fortunes  and  the 
growth  of  corporations  have  greatly  in- 
creased the  manufacture  of  old  and  new 
articles  of  consumption,  and  it  seems  rea- 
sonable to  conclude  that  men's  expendi- 
tures are  larger  than  in  provincial  times; 
but  statistics  also  show  that  their  earnings 
are  greater.  Other  causes  than  extrava- 
gance have  always  caused  our  industrial 
troubles.  Extravagance  usually  affects 
the  individual  at  home,  rather  than  the 
people  as  a  whole. 

The  advocates  of  all  plans  for  a  refor- 
mation of  existing  abuses  can  agree  that  our 
age  has  no  precedent  in  the  annals  of  his- 
tory. All  forms  of  wealth  are  produced 
as  never  before,  and  new  forms  of  use  and 
beauty  are  molded  for  man's  comfort  and 


14  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

convenience.*  The  country  is  no  longer 
a  wilderness,  an  expanse  of  separate  and ' 
isolated  localities,  characterized  by  local 
customs  and  provincialisms,  but  it  is  a 
net-work  of  cities  and  towns,  united  by 
railways  ever  growing,  over  which  "winged 
giants"  transport  passengers  and  freight 
at  an  enormous  rate  of  speed.  All  of  these 
American  cities,  villages,  and  agricultural 
communities,  constitute  a  republic  of 
markets  and  customs,  which,  more  in- 
tensely than  in  the  past,  are  permeated  by 
a  common  spirit.  A  flash  of  the  wires 
often  determines  the  price  of  commodities, 
and  the  new  conquests  of  inventive  genius 
make  obsolete  the  vocations  of  yesterday,  or 
call  new  trades  into  being.  We  can  order 
Parisian  trousseaux  by  galvanic  speech  and 
have  the  luxuries  of  the  world  at  our 
marriage  feasts  quicker  than  our  simple 
forefathers  could  send  their  humble  home- 


*  The  census  of  1885  for  the  commonwealth  of  Mas- 
sachusetts seeks  to  show  the  divisions  of  labor  that 
make  the  industrial  features  of  this  a^e.  The  classi- 
fication shows  more  than  20,000  designations. 


BARONS   AND    BAREFEET.  15 

spun  across  a  half-dozen  counties  by  ox 
team  or  pony  express.  The  luxurious 
surroundings  of  our  people  and  the 
existence  of  many  comforts  which  have 
been  made  possible  by  science  have  ex- 
tended our  lists  of  necessaries.  The 
equipments  demanded  by  moderately 
well-to-do  classes  would  have  been  the 
height  of  extravagance  a  few  generations 
ago.  The  citizen  is  called  upon  for  larger 
expenditures  than  in  the  past,  and  prob- 
ably for  more  extensive  outlays  than  the 
average  earnings  of  our  population  will 
buy.*  This  is  one  frequent  cause  of  com- 
plaint by  the  masses.  They  cannot  have 
as  many  comforts  as  their  wealthy  friends, 
and  with  the  increase  of  wealth  around 
them  they  realize  with  chagrin  that  their 
incomes  will  not  enable  the  purchase  of 

*  As  W.  D.  Howells,  the  novelist  has  strikingly 
said  in  "Annie  Kilburn,"  "No  one  was  meant  to  work 
in  a  mill  all  his  life.  What  the  working  people  want 
is  rest  and  what  they  need  is  decent  homes  where  they 
can  get  it. "  See  Chapter  VIII  of  this  book  where  it 
is  shown  that  labor  is  being  emancipated  gradually 
by  the  growth  of  machinery. 


16  THE   STRUGGLE    FOR    BREAD. 

many  things  which  would  add  to  their 
comfort  or  attract  the  attention  of  their 
neighbors.  Men  are,  after  all,  much  like 
children,  ever  jealous  of  others,  whose 
toys  they  envy.  Whether  a  top  or  a  new 
horse  and  buggy,  a  doll  or  a  bicycle,  the 
spirit  is  one. 

Having  cursorily  reviewed  some  of  the 
signs  cf  the  era  and  noted  some  of  the  minor 
grounds  of  complaint,  let  us  now  examine 
that  definition  of  hard  times  which  is 
often  given  by  prosperous  people,  to  wit:  . 
"Hard  times  is  the  constitutional  laziness 
of  idlers  who  growl  because  thrifty  men 
become  rich."  The  most  limited  ac- 
quaintance with  history  will  show  that 
there  are  times  of  real  suffering  by  large 
masses  of  the  people,  and  these  periods  of 
business  failure  and  idleness  of  working- 
men  are  called  industrial  depressions.  At 
such  times  industrious  and  trustworthy 
people  often  suffer  while  the  authors  of 
commercial  crimes  become  rich.  The 
stories  of  our  statisticians,  supplemented 
by  the  reports  of  commissioners  of  labor 


BARONS   AND    BAREFEET.  17 

throughout  the  Union  are  at  times  as  pa- 
thetic as  the  pictures  of  Victor  Hugo,  in 
"  Les  M iserables."  The  "  want "  advertise- 
ments in  the  great  daily  newspapers,  and 
the  crowded  employment  bureaus  from 
New  York  to  San  Francisco,  are  evidences 
that  if  there  is  work  for  all,  there  are 
often  great  and  seemingly  cruel  inequali- 
ties in  its  distribution. 

Recent  articles  in  the  editorial  columns 
of  the  New  York  Herald  show  that  in  re- 
sponse to  one  advertisement  for  a  clerk, 
salesman,  or  mechanic,  there  have  been 
three  or  four  hundred  letters  from  eager 
searchers  for  something  to  do.  An  ad- 
vertisement in  the  New  York  World  for 
a  steward,  at  a  small  salary,  brought 
nearly  three  hundred  replies.  The  San 
Francisco  Examiner  which  has  been  a 
steadfast  and  powerful  friend  of  Wage 
workers  under  the  management  of  Mr. 
W.  R.  Hearst,  recently  opened  an  em- 
ployment agency  for  the  benefit  of  unem- 
ployed men  and  women,  charging  no  fee 
to  employer  or  employe.  As  a  result  its 
2 


18  THE   STRUGGLE)    FOR   BREAD. 

bureau  has  been  overrun  with  those  eager 
to  become  bread  winners,  but  it  was  im- 
possible to  supply  half  the  applicants  with 
positions.* 

In  his  report  for  1886,  Charles  F.  Peck, 
labor  commissioner  of  New  York,  says:  "  It 
would  be  an  almost  impossible  task  to  ar- 
rive at  the  true  number  of  unemployed,  or 
even  at  a  fair  percentage,  in  a  large  city  like 
New  York.  No  attempt  was  made  to  se- 
cure it.  For  the  purposes  of  this  report  it 
was  only  deemed  advisable  to  show  the 
falsity  of  the  almost  universal  opinion 
that  there  is  work  for  all." 

But  such  facts  are  only  repetitions  of 
history.  So  long  ago  as  1817,  Lord  Brough- 
am pictured  in  fervid  eloquence  the  in- 
dustrial depression  then  harassing  En- 
gland, and  he  said :  "  We  have  known 
times  of  former  suffering,  but  no  man  can 
find  an  example  of  anything  like  the  pres- 

*The  Examinees  bureau  found  positions  for  650  ap- 
plicants the  first  two  weeks  of  its  existence  and 
nearly  1,000  applicants  still  crowded  its  rooms.  At 
the  end  of  four  months  nearly  5,000  positions  had  been 
obtained  for  workmen  at  the  bureau. 


BARONS    AND    BAREFEET.  19 

ent.  There  was  great  distress  in  1812,  yet 
compared  with  the  wide-spread  misery  of 
to-day,  other  periods  of  distress  rise  into 
eras  of  actual  prosperity." 

And  yet  the  English  hard  times  of  1817, 
severe  as  was  the  suffering,  constitute  but 
one  instance  in  many  eras  that  taxed  the 
poor  fund  of  that  country  as  well  as  the 
wisdom  of  its  statesmen.*  Our  own  great 
industrial  depressions  date  no  further  back 
than  1837,  but  since  then  they  have  re- 
curred regularly  at  intervals  of  ten  years 
until  1873,  when  a  siege  of  five  years  of 
universal  industrial  depression  began 
which  remains  a  dark  spot  in  the  mem- 
ory of  many  men  now  in  business.  From 
1878  to  1882  we  had  universal  prosperity, 
but  with  1882  began  a  repetition  of  the 
stagnation  of  1873,  which  diminished  in 
intensity  in  1887-8.  The  foregoing  facts 
belong  to  the  history  of  the  times,  as  seen 
in  the  reports  of  the  United  States  Labor 

*For  a  vivid  picture  of  the  English  poor  a  few  gen- 
erations ago  see  Macaulay's  History  of  England,  Vol. 
1.  See  Thorold  Roger's  "  Six  Centuries  of  Work  and 
Wages." 


20  THE    STRUGGLE    FOR  -BREAD. 

Bureau ;  but  I  have  often  been  surprised 
to  see  sensible  men  put  their  memories, 
and  their  limited  individual  experiences 
against  the  careful  conclusions  of  scholars 
whose  work  is  patient  and  whose  results 
are  supplemented  and  upheld  by  the  re- 
searches of  trained  corps  of  fact-gatherers 
in  the  statistical  departments  of  the  Gov- 
ernment. In  questions  that  require  wide 
generalizations,  the  limited  observation  of 
individuals  is  next  to  useless. 

The  current  events  of  the  times  indicate 
that  the  conflict  between  labor  and  capital 
as  the  trouble  of  wage  workers  with  em- 
ployers is  usually  called,  is  almost  unceas- 
ing. In  1886,  there  were  1,900  strikes  in 
the  State  of  New  York.  There  were  9,861 
firms  in  the  strikes  that  occurred  in  the 
United  States  during  the  same  year.  In 
the  strikes  in  the  United  States  from  1880 
to  1887,  inclusive,  22,304  establishments 
were  involved,  affecting  1,323,203  em- 
ployes. During  the  same  years  there  were 
2,214  establishments  in  which  lockouts 
were  ordered,  and  160,823  employes  were 


BARONS   AND   BAREFEET.  '21 

thereby  set  adrift.  Of  the  strikes  82.24 
per  cent,  were  ordered  by  labor  organiza- 
tions and  of  the  lockouts  79.18  per  cent, 
were  ordered  by  combinations  of  man- 
agers. The  average  days  closed  to  busi- 
ness by  strikes  was  23  and  by  lockouts  28.4. 
The  strikers  gained  their  points  in  10,375 
establishments  or  in  46.52  per  cent,  of  the 
whole,  and  part  success  was  gained  in 
3,004  cases  or  13.47  per  cent,  of  the  whole. 
In  lockouts  the  gain  by  employers  was 
only  in  564  instances  or  25.47  per  cent. 

In  65.99  per  cent,  of  the  strikes  for 
higher  wages,  the  strikers  were  successful. 
The  estimated  losses  to  strikers  for  the 
period  involved  were  $51,814,723  and  to 
employes  through  lockouts  $8,157,717. 

A  valuable  aid  in  the  study  of  the  prob- 
lem of  bread  winning  as  allied  to  dis- 
tressed labor,  is  the  report  for  1886  of 
Carroll  D.  Wright,  United  States  Labor 
Commissioner.  It  is  an  unpartisan  ac- 
count of  the  condition  of  wage  earners. 
By  this  report  it  appears  that  seven  -and 
one-half  per  cent,  of  the  mines  and  fac- 


22  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

tories  of  the  United  States  were  idle  or 
equivalent  to  idle  for  the  whole  of  the 
year  1885.  In  round  numbers  there  were 
255,000  of  these  establishments,  employ- 
ing upwards  of  2,250,000  hands.  By  this 
percentage  (seven  and  one-half)  there  were 
19,129  idle  institutions  and  168,750  hands 
out  of  employment.  By  the  same  report 
there  were  in  round  numbers  ONE  MILLION 
IDLE  PEOPLE  during  1885,  in  four  great 
pursuits,  viz.:  agriculture,  trade  and  trans- 
portation, mechanical  and  mining  indus- 
tries, and  manufactures  [census  classifi- 
cation]. The  commissioner  says  by  "  un- 
employed people,"  as  he  uses  the  term  he 
means  "  those  wTho,  under  prosperous  times, 
would  be  fully  employed,  and  who,  during 
the  time  mentioned,  were  seeking  employ- 
ment." 

One  millon  idle  people  cripple  the  con- 
sumptive power  of  the  country  by  a  loss  of 
$300,000,000  annually,  for  they  fail  in 
earnings  to  the  extent  of  $  1  each  per 
day,  or  a  total  loss  of  wages  of  $1,000,000 
daily,  exclusive  of  Sundays  and  holidays. 


BARONS   AND   BAREFEET.  23 

Mr.  Wright  alleges  that  this  loss  alone 
caused  a  reaction  in  business,  from  which 
resulted  apprehension  and  alarm. 

Do  not  the  foregoing  facts  show  that 
there  is  a  problem  of  distressed  labor  in 
America?  It  is  true  that  hard  times  are 
not  permanent,  nor  does  the  depression 
affect  all  labor,  but  there  are  instances  of 
great  suffering.  The  conservative  com- 
plaints of  those  who  suffer  from  the  out- 
rages of  monopolies,  trusts,  and  selfish  com- 
binations cannot  be  dismissed  with  the 
assertion  that  dissatisfaction  is  anarchy, 
that  redress  is  impossible,  and  that  the 
evils  complained  of  are  wholly  imaginary 
ones.  The  theories  of  optimists  cannot 
palliate  the  suffering  entailed  by  poverty 
upon  a  considerable  part  of  the  popula- 
tion, nor  can  the  frequent  and  serious  blun- 
ders of  misguided  workingmen  prevent 
the  recognition  by  the  public  of  their 
real  grievances  when  they  arise.  As  Col. 
Robert  G.  Ingersoll  so  beautifully  says,  in 
the  North  American  Review  for  March,  1886: 

"The  truth  is  to-day  what  it  has  always 


24  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR    BREAD. 

been,  what  it  always  will  be.  Those  who 
feel  are  the  only  ones  who  think.  A  cry 
comes  from  the  oppressed,  from  the  hungry, 
from  the  downtrodden,  from  the  unfortu- 
nate, from  men  who  despair  and  from 
women  who  weep.  There  are  times  when 
mendicants  become  revolutionists,  when 
a  rag  becomes  a  banner,  under  which 
the  noblest  and  the  bravest  battle  for 
right." 

Abandoning,  then,  all  socialistic  theories 
of  a  reformation  of  the  world,  also  the  un- 
just position  that  labor  has  no  wrongs,  and 
that  the  whole  people  have  no  just  com- 
plaints, let  us  survey  the  facts  themselves 
and  leave  the  mazy  depths  of  theory  to 
dreamers.  Abstaining  alike  from  the  ex- 
cesses of  speech  in  which  out-cast  Euro- 
peans, whose  names  end  in  "ski"  de- 
nounce all  law  and  from  the  censure  of 
those  millionaires — fortunately  not  all  of 
them — who  view  with  cold  unconcern  the 
sufferings  of  the  poorer  people,  let  us  follow 
along  in  the  path  of  simple  truth.  What 
of  the  signs  of  the  times? 


CHAPTER  II. 
THE  STKUGGLE  FOR  WEALTH. 

ENORMOUS  PRODUCTION  CHARACTERIZES  THE  AGE — 
STEAM  SUPPLANTS  MUSCULAR  ENERGY— TRUSTS 
AND  MONOPOLIES  THAT  ROB  THE  MASSES — ARE  THE 
POOR  GROWING  POORER  AND  THE  RICH  RICHER  ? — 
INCREASE  OF  WAGES — MODERN  FEUDALISM. 

Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  pro- 
duction of  wealth  in  the  United  States  is 
greater  than  ever  before,  its  distribution  is 
often  unjust.  This  is  due  to  many  evils 
which  may  be  traced  to  the  door  of  mo- 
nopoly, which  often  oppresses  not  only 
the  laborer  but  everybody.  While  the 
wage  worker  of  1881  received  thirty-one 
per  cent,  more  than  the  wage  worker  of 
1860  the  increase  in  his  earnings  did  not 
keep  pace  with  the  increase  of  production. 
He  did  not  always  get  his  equitable  portion 
of  the  profits  of  industry,  if  you  stop  to 
consider  the  elements  he  contributed. 
In  other  words,  in  1880  the  country's  pro- 
duction was  $43,000,000,000  (billions)  as 

(25) 


26  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

against  $16,000,000,000  (billions)  in  1860,  a 
growth  of  170  per  cent.  In  1880  our  man- 
ufactured products  alone  were  $5,300,000,- 
000,  a  figure  showing  a  much  greater  in- 
crease over  the  manufactures  of  1860  than 
the  60  per  cent,  increase  in  population  ac- 
counts for.  Wealth  has  outrun  popula- 
tion. 

It  has  been  frequently  stated  that  the 
kings  of  Wall  Street  made  $80,000,000  in 
1880,  and  about  the  same  sum  in  1885, 
although  that  year  there  were  20,000  idle 
factories  and  nearly  a  million  idle  em- 
ployes searching  for  employment  in  four 
great  pursuits.  [See  previous  chapter  for 
details.] 

It  requires  but  a  glance  to  prove  that 
the  substitution  of  steam-propelled  ma- 
chinery for  muscular  energy  continu- 
ally increases  the  amount  of  production, 
and  that,  as  Mr.  Thorold  Rogers  has 
shown  in  his  valuable  "Six  Centuries  of 
Work  and  W'ages,"  the  cheapening  of 
necessaries,  with  few  exceptions,  follows,* 


*  On  page  496  of  his  great  work  Mr.  Rogers  says: 


THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   WEALTH.  27 

but  the  ownership  of  vast  manufactures 
has  of  late  years  led  to  the  formation  of  en- 
gines of  oppression  known  as  trusts,  whose 
object  is  to  keep  up  the  prices  of  food  prod- 
ucts and  clothing. 

There  are  but  three  ways  of  gaining 
wealth — by  gift,  by  industry,  and  by  theft. 
Gift  includes  a  finding;  industry  includes 
every  mental,  physical,  and  moral  activ- 
ity; and  theft  includes  all  wrongful  get- 
ting of  property.  Now,  the  question  that 
arises  in  the  mind  of  every  thoughtful  ob- 
server is,  "  How  are  the  gigantic  fortunes 
of  the  United  States  made?"  Which  of 


"  It  is  easy  to  prove  that  the  great  movement  of  mod- 
ern days,  the  employment  of  mechanical  in  the  place 
of  human  forces,  operates  ultimatelyin.  cheapening  prod- 
uce and  in  bettering  the  wages  of  labor.  But  until  that 
is  brought  about,  the  producers  on  the  old  lines  may  be 
subjected  to  severe  privations.  Nay,  unless  precau- 
tions are  taken  against  the  abuse  of  labor  on  the  part 
of  employers,  it  is  very  possible  that  the  mass  of  those 
who  work  under  the  new  system  may  sink  into  a 
lower  position  than  that  which  they  previously  occu- 
pied when  they  were  engaged  with  the  old. " 

I  cannot  too  often  repeat  that  this  work  is  invalu- 
able to  students.  Mr.  Rogers'  book  contains  accurate 
information  for  six  centuries. 


28  THk,   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

the  three  methods  of  property-getting  is 
the  most  useful  to  the  stock  gamblers,  and 
to  men  like  Jay  Gould,  who  once  testified 
in  detail  how  much  it  costs  to  buy  an  a\  er- 
age  legislature?  The  crucial  test,  which  as- 
signs wealth -getting  to  its  proper  classifica- 
tion, is  found  in  one  question :  What  equiv- 
alent does  the  money-maker  render  to  so- 
ciety for  the  wealth  he  takes  from  it? 
When  men  who  are  worth  millions  com- 
bine their  wealth  to  corner  the  products 
of  industry,  raise  the  price  of  necessaries 
to  an  extortionate  rate,  and  thus  impover- 
ish the  people,  they  certainly  grow  rich 
in  a  wrongful  manner.  The  problem  is 
how  to  prevent  combinations  of  wealth 
for  harmful  purposes,  without  interfering 
with  proper  individual  liberties.  It  will 
hardly  be  said  that  the  suppression  of 
these  abuses  is  an  interference  with  the 
liberties  of  citizenship.  The  Government 
in  this  country  has  a  right  each  year  to 
assume  larger  powers  with  the  growth  of 
civilization,  and  to  assume  greater  su-  - 
pervision  for  the  welfare  of  the  people. 


THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   WEALTH.  29 

The  prohibition  of  stock  gambling,  trusts, 
and  pooling  is  a  proper  function  of  the 
same  government  that  has  the  right  to 
punish  counterfeiting,  levy  taxes,  prohibit 
gambling  with  cards  in  States,  and  pro- 
vide for  the  general  welfare  of  its  subjects. 
All  unjust  combinations  of  wealth  for  the 
purpose  of  making  monopolies  of  products 
should  be  prevented  by  the  enactment  and 
enforcement  of  penal  codes  against  them. 
It  is  encouraging,  in  this  connection,  to 
see  that  the  United  States  Commissioner  of 
Labor,  in  his  report  for  1886,  strongly 
urges  the  prevention  of  cornering  and 
trading  in  futures,  but  he  aptly  adds  that 
the  attempt  to  make  any  law  "to  prevent 
men  from  engaging  in  the  unholy  work 
of  speculation  in  food  products,  especially, 
and  in  bringing  pecuniary  responsibility 
to  operations  in.  futures,  will  be  found  to 
tax  the  ingenuity  of  the  law  maker."  In 
concluding  his  admirable  report  on  this 
subject,  he  says:  "It  is  to  be  hoped  that 
some  efficient  means  may  be  found  which 
shall  destroy  the  ability  of  men  to  work 


30  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

public  harm  through  such  kinds  of  spec- 
ulation." 

Many  courts  have  held  that  these  com- 
binations are  unlawful  conspiracies,  but 
the  attempt  to  prevent  their  operations 
has  seldom  proved  successful. 

Instances  of  the  injurious  effects  of  such 
combinations  are  so  numerous  as  to  render 
their  enumeration  unnecessary,  yet  a  few 
citations  are  not  out  of  place.  In  Penn- 
sylvania Governor  Pattison  was,  in  Oc- 
tober, 1886,  struggling  to  dissolve  a  giant 
coal  pool,  by  wrhich  railway  companies 
and  coal  mining  companies  foisted  the 
price  of  coal  in  the  very  face  of  a  constitu- 
tional provision  enacted  to  restrain  such 
evils.  In  his  letter  to  the  attorney-general 
of  the  State  the  governor  says:  "For  long 
periods  this  combination  has  kept  the 
mines  running  on  three-quarter  time,  thus 
putting  nearly  one  hundred  thousand 
workers  on  wrhat  amounted  to  three- 
quarter  pay.  .  .  .  It  has  maintained 
the  price  of  coal  at  figures  ranging  more 
than  $1.00  a  ton  over  and  above  the 


THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   WEALTH.  31 

prices  at  which  it  sold  the  same  article  to 
consumers  further  from  the  mines.  .  .  . 
It  has  advanced  the  charges  for  transpor- 
tation in  the  face  of  the  fact  that  the  net 
earnings  of  the  carrying  companies  be- 
longing to  the  combination  amounted  to 
about  19  per  cent,  per  annum  of  the  cost 
of  the  roads  and  their  equipment;  and  of 
the  further  fact  that  charges  are  higher 
than  they  were  twenty-six  years  ago, 
though  the  cost  of  transporting  a  ton  of 
freight  does  not  to-day  amount  to  more 
than  one-third  of  its  cost  at  that  time. 
.  .  Against  such  combinations  the  indi- 
vidual is  helpless.  ...  It  prejudices 
and  oppresses  individuals." 

In  1886  Jay  Gould  bought  seventy  coal 
mines  lying  within  a  radius  of  fifty  miles 
of  St.  Louis  for  the  purpose  of  killing  all 
competition,  so  that  the  gains  coming  from 
the  sale  of  coal  might  be  whatever  he  dic- 
tated. Though  the  price  of  coal  was 
raised  the  wages  of  miners  received  no 
corresponding  increase. 

In  October,  1888,  there  were  se  ven  hun- 


32  THE   STRUGGLE    FOR   BREAD. 

dred  shivering  workingmen  on  the  streets 
of  Williamsburg  because  the  sugar  trust 
which  closed  De  Castro  and  Banner's  great 
refineries  decided  to  lessen  the  sugar  sup- 
ply of  the  United  States.  The  working- 
men  were  driven  face  to  face  with  a  winter 
of  starvation  in  order  that  the  barons 
might  squeeze  a  few  millions  from  the  con- 
sumers of  sugar.  In  1887  the  hearthstones 
of  laboring  men  were  made  desolate  by  a 
similar  conspiracy  of  greed  and  monopoly. 
The  pathos  of  the  situation  was  indescrib- 
able— women  and  children  in  want  and 
tears  because  the  Shylocks  closed  their  re- 
fineries. The  sugar  trust  is  but  one  in- 
stance in  many  like  it.  A  few  rapacious 
millionaires,  not  content  with  more  money 
than  they  can  spend  wisely  or  decently, 
conclude  that  food  products  shall  not  be 
plentiful  and  cheap,  and  the  people  are 
charged  extortionate  rates  while  the  hand 
of  Toil  is  palsied  by  idleness. 

The  capitalist  often  makes  a  claim  that 
as  the  business  is  his  own  he  may  run  it, 
as  he  wishes,  irrespective  of  the  rights  of 


THE   STRUGGLE    FOR   WEALTH.  33 

workmen  whom  he  regards  as  a  species  of 
serfs.  The  trusts  thus  close  at  any  time 
they  see  fit  to  do  so.  The  reasoning  by 
which  they  uphold  themselves  is  falla- 
cious for  no  business  belongs  wholly  to  the 
employer.  Every  business  partakes  of  the 
elements  of  a  joint  concern:  E.  P.  Cheney 
in  the  " Political  Science  Quarterly"  for 
June,  1889,  thus  states  the  case: — 

"The  employer  furnishes  the  capital 
and  the  general  management,  while  the 
employe  furnishes  the  labor  and  such  in- 
dividual management  as  may  fall  to  the 
lot  of  the  function  he  fulfills.  Their  joint 
product  is  divided  between  them.  Neither 
from  an  economic  nor  from  a  social  point 
of  view  can  the  laborer  be  properly  looked 
upon  as  co-ordinate  with  the  machinery 
and  the  raw  material.  He  is  rather  co- 
ordinate with,  though  performing  less 
elevated  functions  than,  his  employer.  If 
this  is  so,  then  the  demand  of  the  em- 
ployes that  none  but  union  men  be  en- 
gaged, that  such  and  such  shop  rules  be 
enforced,  and  similar  claims,  are  not  an 
undue  interference  with  the  employer's 
affairs  but  simply  a  demand  for  certain 
changes  in  an  affair  of  joint  interest 
two  parties," 


34  TEE   STRUGGLE    FOR    BREAD. 

Again,  he  says:  "This  idea,  that  any 
aggressive  action  on  the  part  of  the  em- 
ployes is  an  undue  interference  with  the 
private  affairs  of  the  employer  and  must 
be  punished  on  his  behalf  by  the  public 
courts,  seems  to  be  distinctly  a  survival 
from  a  period  when  the  courts  served 
largely  to  keep  the  employed  class  in  sub- 
jection to  the  employing  class." 

Recurring  to  the  question  of  the  dis- 
tribution of  wealth  it  is  easy  to  show  that 
while  wages  have  increased,  the  bulk  of 
wealth  of  this  country  is  inequitably  di- 
vided. There  are  too  many  rapacious 
millionaires,  who,  while  thriving  under 
forms  of  law,  insidiously  threaten  the  wel- 
fare of  the  country  by  cultivating  the  de- 
sire for  Csesarism  in  the  financial  world. 
The  man  in  overalls  and  shirt  sleeves, 
equally  with  the  student  of  economics 
sees  the  rapid  concentration  of  wealth  in 
forms  that  wreak  evil  upon  the  masses. 
He  sees  vast  corporations,  trusts,  and  syn- 
dicates, growing  powerful  by  criminal  con- 
spiracies, ruinous  to  the  welfare  of  the 
people;  he  hears  of  land  grants  to  railroad 


THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   WEALTH.          35 

companies,  and  he  sees  laws  made  by  the 
servants  of  corporations,  who  serve  at  the 
beck  and  nod  of  their  masters.  Beholding 
all  these  things  he  asks  those  questions 
born  of  a  desire  to  see  justice  done  to  all 
men.  Is  it,  after  all.  a  wonder  that  the 
masses  turn  from  the  loneliness  of  the 
night  of  hard  times  toward  Socialism  and 
Nationalism?  These  forms  of  relief  have 
just  enough  poetry  and  promise  in  them 
to  win  many  a  helpless  wanderer  who 
longs  to  flee  from  the  awful  heat  and 
glamour  of  the  industrial  warfare.  If 
they  are  mild  forms  of  slavery  at  best,  the 
careworn  traveler  feels  that  they  cannot 
be  worse  than  the  inequalities  of  the  pres- 
ent system.  Just  here  is  why  the  evils 
that  cry  for  redress  should  receive  more 
attention  at  the  hands  of  the  entire  people. 
The  strikes  and  lockouts  cost  money, 
and  the  trusts  are  more  expensive  than 
the  strikes.  So  long  as  these  industrial 
wars  and  abuses  continue  the  production 
of  the  country  is  either  lessened  or  di- 
verted into  wrongful  channels,  and  when 


36  THE   STRUGGLE    FOR   RREAD. 

peace  is  declared,  if  ever,  there  will  be  less 
to  divide  than  if  there  had  been  equity 
from  the  start. 

Let  us  get  at  the  base  of  the  wrongs  that 
are  done  in  the  name  of  the  law  and  to  the 
disadvantage  of  the  people.  Why  is  there 
industrial  war  ?  What  is  its  object  ?  The 
fight  is  for  a  more  equitable  division  of 
the  constantly  increasing  wealth  of  the 
country.  The  laborer  says  he  is  not  get- 
ting enough,  while  the  capitalist  insists 
that  the  laborer  should  be  content  with 
his  wages,  which,  he  says,  were  never  so 
good  in  the  history  of  the  world.  The 
capitalist  says  to  the  laborer,  "  Why  do 
you  complain?  You  earn  as  much  as 
you  ever  did,  do  you  not?"  The  work- 
.ingman  replies,  "  And  you  get  more  than 
you  ever  did,  do  you  not?  There  is  more 
wealth, in  the  country  than  there  ever  was, 
and  we  have  helped  to  create  this  wealth. 
We  do  not  want  it  all,  but  we  want  a 
larger  share  of  it  than  we  now  get."  Does 
the  laborer  make  out  a  case,  or  must  we 
believe  without  question  the  capitalist's 


THE    STRUGGLE    FOR   WEALTH.  37 

claim  that  he  is  liberal  enough  to  pay 
every  cent  that  is  in  justice  the  working- 
man's  right  ?  The  history  of  the  growth 
of  labor  unions  from  the  earliest  times  in 
England  shows  that  capital,  left  to  itself, 
forces  wages  to  a  bare  subsistence.* 

If  the  wealth  of  the  country  is  greater 
to-day  than  it  was  .yesterday,  of  course 
there  is  more  to  be  divided  among  those 
entitled  to  it,  but  the  question  is,  "  Whose 
wealth  is  it?  "  The  laborer  says  he  wants 
more  because  there  is  more,  and  that  he 
helped  to  create  the  enlarged  wealth.  Is 
he  entitled  to  an  increase,  and  if  so,  why? 
As  heretofore  shown,  the  material  wealth 
of  the  country  increased  from  $16,000,- 
000,000  to  $43,000,000,000,  or  170  per 
cent.,  from  1860  to  1880,  but  owing  to  in- 
equalities of  industry,  an  equitable  distri- 
bution would  give  some  individuals  much 

*Thorold  Rogers  says,  page  400  of  "  Work  and 
Wages,"  referring  to  statutes  against  laborers,  after  the 
plan  of  the  statute  of  Edward  VI.:  "The  imaginary 
offense  which  employers  and  lawyers  invented  for  the 
purpose  of  keeping  wages  low  is  on  a  par  with  the 
crime  of  witchcraft." 


38  THE   STRUGGLE    FOE,   BREAD. 

more  than  others.  How  much  more  than 
his  share  has  the  greedy  monopolist  ob- 
tained? The  workingmen  claim  that  they 
are  justty  entitled  to  more  of  this  wealth 
than  they  are  now  getting,  and  it  becomes 
important  in  this  connection  to  know  just 
what  they  now  get,  and  what  they  got  in 
the  past. 

That  wages  have  increased  is  proved  by 
the  most  casual  glance  at  the  figures. 
There  is,  therefore,  part  fallacy  and  part 
truth  in  the  oft-repeated  statement  that 
the  rich  are  growing  richer  and  the  poor, 
poorer,*  first  stated  by  Karl  Max,  the  so- 
cialist, and  lately  rejected  by  Henry  George, 
the  land  agitator. 

In  Great  Britain  the  income  tax  sched- 
ules furnish  reliable  evidence  as  to  the 
number  of  persons  whose  incomes  in  this 
country  are  increasing  and  diminishing. 

*By  the  report  of  Mr.  Ford  of  the  Congressional  In- 
vestigating Committee  the  5,000,000  people  of  New 
York  pay  $20,000,00!)  annually  to  support  the  paupers 
of  that  State.  Since  1,000,000  of  the  population  are 
wage  earners  their  share  per  capita  to  support  paupers 
was  $20  annually. 


THE   STRUGGLE   FOR    WEALTH.  39 

By  that  table  there  were  three  and  one- 
half  times  as  many  persons  in  1879  with 
an  income  of  $750  per  annum  as  in  1850; 
three  times  as  many  with  incomes  from 
$1,500  to  $2,500;  two  and  one-half  times 
as  many  with  incomes  of  $2,500  to  $5,000; 
two  and  three-fourth  times  as  many  from 
$10,000  to  $15,000,  and  two  and  one-half 
times  as  many  with  incomes  from  $5,000 
to  $10,000,  while  during  the  same  era  pop- 
ulation increased  only  33  per  cent.  The 
laboring  class  whose  annual  incomes  are 
less  than  $750  averaged  in  1850-51  $265 ; 
in  1881  the  average  had  risen  to  $415. 
More  than  180,000  persons  had  ascended 
from  the  poor  class  into  the  class  paying 
an  income  tax.  The  incomes  of  those  who 
have  less  than  $750  a  year  increased  in 
forty  years  130  per  cent,  Each  family 
among  the  poorer  classes  in  1843  had 
about  $200  a  year;  but  in  1851  $290,  and 
in  1880,  $500, 

Mulhall  in  his  "Dictionary  of  Statistics," 
page  28,  gives  the  number  in  each  million 
inhabitants  as  seen  in  the  following  table: 


40  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

$1,000  to  $5,000.    Over  $5,000. 

1812 3280 34 

1850 3059 56 

1860 2896 53 

1870 4139 67 

1880 6225 88 

The  wages  of  cotton  operatives  in  Mas- 
sachusetts were,  in  1840,  $175  a  year  with 
13  hours'  work;  in  1883,  wages  were  $287, 
and  hours  11. 

In  the  United  States  the  most  trust- 
worthy returns  show  that  the  average  in- 
crease in  wages  since  1860  is  31  per  cent., 
and  in  Massachusetts,  42  per  cent,  in  some 
vocations.  During  the  same  period  the 
purchasing  power  of  money  has  increased. 
It  has  been  estimated  by  Dr.  W.  T.  Har- 
ris that  the  prices  of  necessaries  are  on  the 
whole  a  little  lower  now  than  formerly. 
He  says  that  the  chief  articles  that  affect 
the  cost  of  living  rank  as  follows  in  their 
power  to  raise  or  lower  the  said  cost  of  liv- 
ing :  grain  counts  for  25  per  cent,  of  the 
aggregate  consumption;  meat  for  16;  iron 
and  steel  wares  for  7;  dairy  products  for 
6J;  cotton  goods  for  6;  lumber  for  5; 


THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   WEALTH.  41 

woolen  goods  for  4;  and  all  other  items 
for  less.  Each  must  be  estimated  at  its 
percentage.  Continuing,  Dr.  Harris  says : 
"  Taking  the  twenty  items  that  comprise 
90  per  cent,  of  all  human  industries  the 
result  is  found  that  prices  of  the  period 
from  1841-50  are  over  5  per  cent,  higher 
than  those  of  1881-4.  Meat  has  risen  but 
grain  has  fallen.  Agricultural  products 
average  somewhat  higher  prices.  Manu- 
facturers are  much  lower." 

All  statistics  of  wages  must  be  faithfully 
compared  with  "price  levels/'  showing  the 
cost  of  necessary  articles  of  food,  clothing 
and  creature  comforts. 

In  this  connection  it  must  be  borne  in 
mind  that  increased  production  has  not 
only  raised  the  scale  of  living,  but  it  has 
employed  more  people.  Thousands  of 
men  are  engaged  in*  new  industries  which 
were  unknown  before  labor-saving  ma- 
chinery. The  following  interesting  facts 
are  from  the  census  of  the  United  States 
for  1880:— 


42  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR    BREAD. 


1850.         1880. 
^,059    2,732,595          185 
$236,755,464.$947,953,795    300 

In  England  the  greatly  increased  con- 
sumption of  food  products  shows  the 
larger  earnings  of  the  poor.  The  wages 
there  from  1840  to  1881,  according  to 
Giffin,  increased  from  30  to  100  per  cent., 
while  the  hours  of  work  diminished  20 
per  cent.  The  increased  deposits  in  sav- 
ing banks  in  England  and  America  indi- 
cate greater  prosperity  of  the  masses  than 
in  the  past. 

The  following  table,  carefully  compiled 
from  statistics  in  England,  shows  the 
diffusion  of  increased  purchasing  power 
and  consumption  of  products  among  the 
working  classes. 

Articles.  1840.  1881. 

Bacon  and  hams  ....  ......  ...Ibs..  0.01  13.93 

Butter  .....................   '*  .  .  1.05  6.36 

Cheese  ................  .  ____    «*..  0.92  5.77 

Currants  and  raisins.  ........    "  .  .  1.45  4.34 

Eggs   ...........    .....  _____  No.  .  3.63  21.65 

Potatoes    ...................  Ibs..  0.01  12.85 

Rice  .......................   *•'...  0.90  16.32 


THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   WEALTH.  43 


Cocoa Ibs.      0.08  0.31 


Coffee 

Corn,  wheat,  and  wheat  flour. 

Raw  Sugar 

Refined  Sugar 

Tea 

Tobacco 

Wine g 

Spirits 

Malt. . 


1.08  0.89 

42.47  216.92 

15.20  58.92 

nil.  8.44 

1.22  4.58 

O.S6  1.41 

0.25  0.45 

0.97  1.89 

1.59  1.91 


Mr.  Seymour  Dexter  shows  in  his  treat 
ise  on  "Co-operative  Savings  and  Loan 
Associations/'  that  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  men  are  obtaining  homes  under  that  sys- 
tem of  co-operation.  Dr.  Richard  T.  Ely 
states  in  his  "  Labor  Movement  in  Amer- 
ica," that  up  to  1880,  60,000  comfortable 
homes  had  been  constructed  in  Philadel- 
phia alone  by  this  system  of  building. 
These  facts  undoubtedly  show  an  increase, 
of  wealth  among  the  poor.  On  January  1 
1 889,  there  were  about  4,000  loan  associa- 
tions in  the  United  States,  scattered  from 
ocean  to  ocean. 

These  evidences  of  thrift  do  not  dis- 
prove the  fact  that  there  are  many  poor,  un- 
skilled laborers  in  England  and  America 
whose  condition  is  pitiable.  He  who  toils 


44  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

at  those  handicrafts  in  which  machinery 
competes  must  work  at  a  continually  in- 
creasing disadvantage.  Professor  J.  L. 
Pickard  put  the  case  forcibly  at  a  late 
meeting  of  the  National  Teachers'  Educa- 
tional Association.  He  said : — 

"  The  citizen  of  to-day  needs  a  better 
eqaipment  than  he  of  the  past.  In  indus- 
trial life  there  has  been  a  constant  aban- 
donment of  old  forms  and  a  constant  in- 
troduction of  new  agencies.  The  sickle 
has  given  place  to  the  reaper;  a  self-binder 
has  diminished  the  number  of  followers  of 
the  reaper;  steam  has  supplemented  or 
transplanted  entirely  the  white  wings  of 
commerce;  the  palace  car  has  relegated 
the  Concord  coach  to  the  back -yard  of 
some  hostlery;  the  steady  motion  of  the 
feminine  foot  produces  more  and  better 
stitches  than  the  most  nimble  fingers ;  the 
spinning-wheel  of  the  grandmother  stands 
unused  in  the  garret,  while  a  few  steps 
back  and  forth  of  the  grand-daughter 
multiply  a  hundred  fold  the  threads  most 
deftly  spun.  '  Still  the  old  principle  re- 
mains. It  is  the  sickle,  the  vessel,  the 
coach,  the  needle,  the  wrheel,  unchanged 
in  name  or  in  purpose,  but  greatly  in- 


1   THE   STRUGGLE   FOE,   WEALTH.  45 

creased  in  capacity  and  power  under  the 
new  development.  This  increase  is  not 
an  inspiration  of  matter  but  of  mind, 
which  better  understands  and  controls 
matter.  The  demand  of  the  age  is,  there- 
fore, for  a  quickened  mind,  and  the  'new 
education/  must  supply  the  quickening 
» power.  To  this  end  it  must  enter  new 
fields,  make  broader  and  better  cultivation 
of  the  old, — discard  old  and  insufficient 
tools,  introduce  'new  and  more  effective 
agencies  and  methods.'7* 

Even  when  the  citizen  is  fully  equipped 

*It  is  interesting  in  this  connection  to  notice  the  fol- 
lowing facts:  Steam  engines  in  Great  Britain  amount 
to  9,740,000,000  horse  power.  Steam  engines  in  the 
Continent  of  Europe  amount  to  14,820,000,000  horse 
power.  Steam  engines  in  the  United  States  amount 
to  10,540,000,000  horse  power. 

For  further  evidences  that  wages  are  increasing,  see 
Chapter  VI.,  where  the  rates  of  skilled  labor  are 
shown.  The  average  rate  of  skilled  labor  in  Illinois 
(see  labor  report  for  1884)  is  given  at  $2.12|  per  day. 
766  establishments  in  Illinois  pay  $2.50  and  over; 
1,400  establishments  out  of  a  total  of  1,650,  pay  $2.00 
and  over.  Teamsters  make  $459.59;  tailors,  $542.94; 
stone  masons,  $467.21;  printers,  $654.  Contrast  these 
figures  with  the  4,240  millions  of  dollars  annual  in- 
come in  Russia,  which  gives  an  average  of  14  cents  per 
day  to  each  inhabitant. 


46  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

to  compete  with  machinery,  he  has  other 
and  more  powerful  enemies  to  fight. 
There  are  unwholesome  combinations  of 
greed  which  cannot  be  put  down  by  the 
private  citizen  who  meets  them  hand  to 
hand  in  the  combat.  It  is  greatly  as  Mr. 
James  F.  Hudson,  the  eminent  writer 
on  the  railway  problem,  says: — 

"  Our  modern  feudalism  is  most  appar- 
ent in  the  erection  of  great  and  irrespon- 
sible rulers  of  industry  whose  power,  like 
that  of  the  feudal  barons,  pursues  the  peo- 
ple and  even  overshadows  the  Government 
which  gave  it  existence.  The  only  impor- 
tant distinction  is>  that,  in  the  old  days  of 
force,  the  power  of  feudalism  was  measured 
by  thousands  of  warriors,  while  in  the 
days  of  modern  plutocracy,  it  is  measured 
by  millions  of  money." 

Let  us  next  see  how  the  prostitution  of 
the  iron  highway  to  purposes  of  private 
gain  affects  the  whole  people. 


CHAPTER   III. 
THE  RAILWAY  PROBLEM. 

ONE  OF  THE  PERSISTENT  CAUSES  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DE- 
PRESSION   IS    THE   Ar.USE    THAT     INHERES    IN    THE 

PRESENT  RAILWAY  SYSTEM — CHARGING  THE  TRAF- 
FIC ALL  IT  WILL  BEAR  Is  ROBBERY  OF  THE  PEOPLE 
— CORRUPTION  OF  LEGISLATION — LEGAL  DEFINI- 
TION OF  HIGHWAYS — EARNINGS  OF  THE  ROADS — 
EXTENT  OF  STOCK  WATERING— How  AGRICULTUR- 
ISTS ARE  OPPRESSED,  ETC.  ,  ETC. 

Railroads,  notwithstanding  their  many 
benefits  to  society,  are  not  operated  on  the 
principle  of  "the  greatest  good  to  the 
greatest  number."  The  leading  motive  of 
the  railway  companies  is  money -getting, 
irrespective  of  the  general  welfare  of  the 
people,  for  the  principle  ever  kept  in  view 
by  the  companies  is,  as  formulated  in 
their  maxim,  "Charge  the  traffic  all  it  will 
bear,"  which  means  "Let  us  grow  rich 
and  let  the  people  look  out  for  them- 
selves." 

The  reverse  of  the  railway  motto  should 

(47) 


48  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR    BREAD. 

be  the  rule.  The  public  has  a  right  to  the 
lowest  possible  rates,  for  since  the  roads 
are  highways  their  benefits  should  be  for 
the  many. 

Steam  has  greatly  reduced  the  cost  of 
transportation  and  driven  all  other  compe- 
tition from  the  field.  It  has  so  multiplied 
our  list  of  necessaries,  by  uniting  the  in. 
terests  of  distant  localities,  that  values  are 
relative  and  all  bare  figures  are  mislead- 
ing when  applied  to  freight  and  passenger 
rates ;  hence  it  is  not  a  fair  test  to  compare 
tariffs  with  ante-railway  rates.*  The 

*Railroads  have  reduced  the  cost  of  carrying 
freight  from  3£ "  cents,  per  ton  per  mile  to  \  cent  per 
ton  per  mile,  and  thereby  saved  more  than  $500,000,- 
000  annually  to  the  country  (the  actual  freight  charges 
being  $416,000,000,  and  the  old  rates  would  be  more 
than  $1,000,000,000.)  Mr.  Atkinson  shows  that  in 
1883  Ohio  alone  saved  $89,000,000  over  the  rates  of 
1869.  The  American  Economic  Association's  report, 
July,  1887,  says  : 

The  history  of  the  railway,  as  perhaps  that  of  no 
other  economic  institution  of  our  national  life,  serves 
to  illustrate  the  inevitable  tendency  of  a  strong  gov- 
ernment, if  not  to  extend  the  actual  sphere  of  its 
duties,  at  least  to  increase  in  importance  by  the  grow- 
ing importance  of  its  functions. 


THE    RAILWAY    PROBLEM.  49 

question  is  not,  how  much  cheaper  are 
freights  to-day  than  at  some  past  time,  but 
how  much  higher  are  they  to-day  than  they 
should  be. 

It  requires  no  argument  to  prove  that 
when  these  railroad  tariff-lists  on  the  prod- 
ucts of  industry  are  enormously  high 
the  result  is  the  impoverishment  of  those 
who  are  compelled  to  ship  their  products 
and  pay  the  rates.  To  come  directly  to 
the  question,  if  the  farmer  is  deprived  of 
an  enlarged  market,  by  a  freight  rate 
that  eats  up  the  margin  of  profit  which 
the  distant  market  would  give  him  over  a 
local  one,  he  cannot  prosper. 

A  slight  study  of  freight  rates  shows 
that  they  are  sufficiently  high  to  leave 
very  little  margin  to  agriculturists,  espe- 
cially those  who  live  in  the  West  and 
South.  For  example,  the  joint  rates  for 
transportation,  as  reported  by  the  Com- 
missioner of  Agriculture  in  1885,  were  as 
follows,  on  the  following  articles:  On  corn 
rye,  oats  and  barley,  per  hundred  pounds,, 
from  Kansas  City  to  Chicago,  20  cents; 


50  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

hogs,  single  deck  per  car,  $42.50;  unman- 
ufactured tobacco,  per  hundred  pounds, 
35  cents;  wheat,  per  hundred  pounds,  25 
cents.  The  rates  from  Chicago  to  New 
York  were  as  follows :  Grain,  per  one  hun- 
dred pounds,  30  cents ;  live  hogs,  per  hun- 
dred pounds,  30  cents ;  wool,  per  hundred 
pounds,  compressed  in  small  bales,  85 
cents. 

There  have  been  frequent  instances 
where  railroad  companies  have  suddenly 
increased  their  freight  rates  on  farm  prod- 
ucts when  the  markets  were  for  any  rea- 
son stimulated,  until  the  freightage  thus 
extorted  absorbed  the  difference  in  prices 
between  the  local  and  the  distant  market. 
In  effect  this  is  equivalent  to  a  failure  of 
crops,  since,  if  the  farmer's  crop  nets  him 
no  gain,  he  might  as  well  not  have  planted 
it.  The  reduction  of  the  farmer's  receipts 
results,  so  far  as  he  is  concerned,  in  en- 
forced economy,  which  is  an  exact  defini- 
tion of  hard  times.  He  is  cut  short,  un- 
til he  becomes  not  only  economical,  but 
parsimonious,  from  necessity.  The  crip. 


THE   RAILWAY    PROBLEM.  51 

pling  of  the  consumptive  power  of  so  large 
a  percentage  of  the  population  as  the  ag- 
riculturists also  involves  the  industries  of 
the  entire  country.  The  warehouses  of 
manufacturers  become  overstocked,  there 
is  a  cessation  of  production,  and  there  are 
lockouts  and  "  shut-downs,"  or  a  general 
lowering  of  wages.  Thus,  a  large  crop 
that  cannot  be  sold  for  good  prices  reduces 
the  consumptive  power  of  the  entire  pop- 
ulation, part  of  whom  are  forced  to  be  idle. 
When  one  reflects  that  out  of  a  total  busi- 
ness population  of  17,000,000  nearly  8,- 
000,000  (7,670,493),  with  the  families  de- 
pendent on  them  for  support,  were  in  1880, 
engaged  in  agricultural  pursuits,  *an  idea 
may  be  gained  of  the  disaster  which  must 
overtake  the  industries  of  the  country 
when  the  railroad  companies  inflict  these 
abuses  upon  them. 

The  actual  cost  of  carrying  freight  and 
passengers  is  so  low,  compared  with  the 
rates  charged  by  the  companies,  that  the 

*See  table  showing  persons  engaged  in  various  pur- 
suits in  the  United  States.  Turn  to  "Appendix." 


52  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

average  man  will  hardly  believe  the  fig- 
ures when  he  sees  them.  Suppose  that 
we  turn  our  attention  to  the  reports  of  the 
companies  and  others  _who  are  supposed  to 
know  most  about  these  things.  On  the  25th 
day  of  June,  1885,  two  eminent  construc- 
tion engineers,  Mr.  E.  Sweet  and  Mr.  E. 
L.  Corthel,  read  addresses  before  the 
American  Society  of  Civil  Engineers  on 
the  subject  of  the  cost  of  carrying  freight. 
These  two  papers  throw  great  light  on 
the  subject,  and  aid  the  commonest  lay- 
man in  reasoning  out  this  problem.  Here 
is  what  they  say : — 

"  The  reasons  for  the  reduced  cost  in 
railway  transportation  of  late  years  are  im- 
provements in  the  condition  of  railroads 
by  better  construction,  better  maintenance 
of  the  track/  and  in  more  economical  ad- 
ministration ;  also  in  the  increased  amount 
of  the  freight  hauled  on  one  train,  which 
is  made  possible  by  the  increase  in  loco- 
motive power,  and  in  the  capacity  of  the 
cars.  The  train-load  has  increased  about 
75  per  cent.  The  capacity  of  cars  in- 


THE   RAILWAY   PROBLEM.  53 

creased  from  20,000  pounds  in  1855,  to 
40,000  pounds  in  1876.  The  carrying 
capacity  in  1885  was  50,000  pounds,  and 
the  master  car-builders  have  recently  de- 
cided upon  a  standard  car  which  will 
carry  60.000  pounds.  The  weight  of  cars 
on  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  increased 
from  20,500  to  22,000  only,  from  1870  to 
1881,  but  in  the  same  period  the  load 
capacity  increased  from  20,000  to  40,000 
pounds.  Cost  of  hauling  on  American 
railways  has  been  about  6-100  of  a  cent 
per  ton  per  mile.  All  expenses  included, 
on  the  best  American  railways,  the  cost 
of  both  handling  and  hauling  has  been 
about  three  mills  per  ton  per  mile.  All 
expenses,  including  receiving,  loading, 
hauling,  handling,  discharging,  and  every 
other  expense,  has  been  about  four  mills 
per  ton  per  mile,  average,  on  American  rail- 
ways." 

Are  these  figures  not  enough  to  reveal, 
even  to  the  simplest  mind,  the  fact  that 
there  must  be  vast  abuses  in  the  depart- 
ment which  fixes  tariff  rates  on  our  pro- 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


54  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

ducts?  How  else  can  you  account  for  the 
enormous  difference  between  cost  of  trans- 
portation and  charges  to  patrons.*  Let  us 

*NOTK. — Charles  Francis  Adams  has  drawn  a  striking 
picture  of  these  evils.  He  says: — 

"Everywhere,  and  at  all  times,  these  corporations 
illustrate  the  truth  of  the  old  maxim  of  the  common 
law,  that  corporations  have  no  souls.  .  .  .  The 
system  of  corporate  life  and  corporate  power,  as  applied 
to  ind  ustrial  development,  is  yet  in  its  infancy.  It  tends 
always  to  development, — always  to  consolidation; — 
it  id  ever  grasping  new  powers  or  insidiously  exercis- 
ing covert  influence.  Even  now  the  system  threatens 
the  central  Government.  .  .  .  The  belief  is  com- 
mon in  America  that  the  day  is  at  hand  when  corpor- 
ations far  greater  than  Erie — swaying  power  such  as 
has  never  in  the  world's  history  been  trusted  in  the 
hands  of  mere  private  citizens,  controlled  by  single 
men  like  VanderHilt,  or  by  combinations  of  men  like 
Fisk,  Gould,  and  Lane,  after  having  created  a  system 
of  quiet  but  irrepressible  corruption,  will  ultimately 
succeed  in  directing  Government  itself.  .  .  .  We 
know  what  aristocracy,  autocracy,  democracy  are, 
but  we  have  no  word  to  express  government  by  moneyed 
corporations;  yet  the  people  already  instinctively  seek 
protection  against  it,  and  losk  for  such  protection, 
and  significantly  enough,  not  to  their  own  Legislatures, 
but  to  the  single  autocratic  feature  retained  in  our 
system  of  government — a  veto  by  the  Executive. 
Vanderbilt  embodies  the  autocratic  power  of  C«sarism 
introduced  into  corporate  life;  and  as  he  alone  cannot 


THE  RAILWAY   PROBLEM.  55 

analyze  some  of  these  abuses,  but  first  let 
us  view  a  few  general  principles. 

Whoever  or  whatever  imposes  unneces- 
sary restraints  upon  the  power  and  right 
of  free  locomotion,  and  whoever  and  what- 
ever unnecessarily  removes  from  men  the 
power  to  freely  exchange  commodities, 
wields  a  tyrannical  influence  over  the  peo- 
ple. 

The  unhampered  exchange  of  services 
is  the  foundation  of  prosperity.  The 
power  to  change  our  habitations  cheaply, 
as  pleasure,  convenience,  or  business  de- 
mands, is  a  blessing.  No  Government  has 
the  right  to  rob  the  people  of  this  power. 

High  freight  and  high  passenger  rates 
make  men  dependent.  Dependency  is 
slavery  in  part.  The  barnacle,  the  oyster, 
cannot  move.  No  muscular  power  can 
compete  with  steam.  The  uncivilized 

obtain  complete  government  of  the  State,  it  perhaps 
only  remains  for  the  coming  man  to  carry  the  combi- 
nation of  elements  one  step  in  advance  and  put  Caesar- 
ism  at  once  in  control  of  the  corporations,  and  of  the 
proletariat,  to  briag  our  vaunted  institutions  within 
the  dreadful  rule  of  all  historic  precedent." 


56         THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  BREAD. 

man  is  tyrannized  over  by  gravitation, 
which  his  forces  cannot  conquer;  but  the 
civilized  man  invented  the  steam  engine, 
"hitched  his  wagon  to  a  star."  It  kills 
time  and  space,  throwing  weary  miles 
over  its  Atlantan  shoulders  untiringly, 
carrying  godlike  burdens,  and  yet  the  peo- 
ple have  not  been  given  the  highest  serv- 
ices which  steam  offers  to  the  race.  The 
tyrants  of  modern  industry,  the  barons  of 
the  feudalism  of  money  stand  between  the 
citizen  and  the  enjoyment  of  these  high 
privileges.  They  impose  useless  burdens 
upon  the  power  to  exchange  our  services, 
the  products  of  workshop  and  field. 

Then  what  is  this  railway  question,  of 
which  we  hear  so  much  ?  Are  there  not 
some  general  principles  underlying  the 
system  itself,  the  violation  of  which  is  fol- 
lowed by  the  evils  of  which  we  complain? 

The  railway  problem  proper,  in  the 
highest  and  most  accurate  meaning  of  the 
terms,  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the 
problem  of  so  utilizing  steam  methods  of 
land  locomotion  as  to  give  to  every  citizen 


THE   RAILWAY    PlloJiLEM.  Ol 

the  highest  liberty  of  transposition  con- 
sistent with  the  like  liberty  of  every  other 
citizen.  In  other  words,  how  to  use  this 
new  giant,  which  carries  tons  faster  than 
the  wind  blows  a  feather,  to  the  best  ad- 
vantage of  all  men ;  and  to  do  this  without 
violating  the  principles  of  American  lib- 
erty, and  without  doing  violence  to  prop- 
erty in  vested  rights. 

The  legal  authorities  are  almost  unani- 
mous in  the  conclusion  that  railways  are 
highways.  Whether  we  read  the  opinion 
of  Chief  Justice  Waite  in  the  case  of  the 
Pensacola  Telegraph  Company  (96  U.  S. 
page  1),  in  which  he  says  that  railways  are 
highways,  or  the  many  legal  text-books  on 
the  subject,  the  conclusions  are  the  same. 
The  principle  has  been  clearly  enunciated 
in  many  cases  by  the  Supreme  Courts  of 
nearly  ali  th  older  States,  especially  by 
the  courts  o/  New  York,  Massachusetts, 
Connecticut,  Maryland,  the  Carolinas, 
Vermont,  Iowa,  and  Pennsylvania.  In 
a  large  number  of  States,  among  which  are 
Missouri,  Nebraska,  Colorado,  Illinois, 


58  THE   STRUGGLE    FOR    BREAD. 

Pennsylvania,  and  Texas,  the  State  Con- 
stitutions declare  that  railways  are  public 
highways.  This  eminently  just  principle 
and  sound  conclusion  of  law  was  declared 
more  forcibly  than  for  many  years  by  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  in 
Olcott  vs.  The  Supervisors,  16  Wall.  678. 
The  public  character  and  public  obliga- 
tions of  the  roads  have  long  ago  passed? 
beyond  question,  into  the  common  law  of 
America.  While  this  is  true  in  theory, 
the  fact  stares  us  in  the  face  that  a  monop- 
oly of  the  highway,  the  exclusive  right  to  move 
trains  over  the  road,  destroys  competition 
and  robs  the  road  of  the  essential  advan- 
tages of  a  highway  to  the  people  at  large.* 


*NoTK. — A  study  of  the  history  of  highways  will 
show  that  a  comprehensive  definition,  embracing 
every  phasa  of  land  ways)  characterizes  them  as  such 
modifications  of  the  surface  of  the  earth  as  will  enable 
it  fitly  to  receive  the  vehicle  furnished  by  the  civiliza- 
tion of  the  era.  Thus  a  road  is  primarily  the  essen- 
tial outlet  or  sole  pathway  for  locomotion  on  the  land. 

Highways  are  of  great  antiquity.  They  must  have 
existed  in  ancient  Egypt  in  great  perfection,  for  the 
Egyptians  had  hard,  smooth  roads,  over  which  they 


THE   RILWAY   PROBLEM.  59 

It  is  strange  that  rail  ways  ever  degenerated 
into  such   an  abuse,  in  view   of  the  fact 


carried  immense  blocks  of  stone  for  the  Pyramids. 
Highways  also  existed  among  the  Hebrews,  for  in 
Judges,  chapter  v,  verse  6,  Deborah  sings  of  aban- 
doned highways:  "  In  the  days  of  Sham  gar,  the  son  of 
Anath,  in  the  days  of  Jael,  the  highways  were  unocc- 
upied, and  the  travelers  walked  through  byways." 
In  ancient  Greece  and  Rome  road-building  was  a  great 
science,  but  the  Carthaginians  seem  to  have  excelled 
all  others  as  builders  of  great  roads.  The  student  of 
history  will  recall  the  Roman  roads,  Via  Appia,  Via 
Aurelia,  the  Tyrrhean  coast  roads,  and  the  famous 
Flammiuian  way.  Roman  military  roads  were  also 
very  numerous.  Going  into  another  country  we  find 
that  Alexander  Humboldt,  philosopher  and  student, 
says  th  it  the  ancieat  Incas  built  wonderful  roads,  and 
he  refers  t )  their  mountain  highways  over  the  Andes. 
The  evolution  of  the  road  and  the  evolution  of  road 
vehicles  have  necessarily  been  almost  simultaneous,  the 
improvement  of  the  vehicle  demanding  such  a  modifi- 
cation of  the  road  as  to  reader  it  useful  and  safe. 
Chariots  are  the  most  ancient  road  vehicles  of  which 
history  speaks.  The  first  chariot  was  made  by  Erich- 
thouius,  at  Athens,  1486  B.  c.,  and  the  earliest  pur- 
poses for  which  transportation  was  applied  were  war 
and  agriculture — war  first  and  most  universally.  [See 
Exodus  14:7.]  In  England,  the  earliest  vehicle  was 
the  "caratta"  of  the  thirteenth  century,  and  it  was 
used  chiefly  for  women.  Next  came  the  two-horoe 
litter  of  the  fourteenth  century.  Highways  them- 


60  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

that  their  character  as  highways  is  the 
sole  license  by  which  the  companies  were 

selves  are,  in  England,  said  to  be  "of  immemorial  an- 
tiquity, or  else  created  by  act  of  Parliament. "  Horses 
and  camels  are  found  in  abundance  in  regions  first  peo- 
pled by  man,  and  riding  on  the  backs  of  camels  doubt- 
less preceded  the  custom  of  driving  domestic  animals 
harnessed  to  vehicles.  As  a  further  historical  study 
it  may  be  interesting  to  know  that  the  various  meth- 
ods of  transportation  used  in  ages  past  have  necessa- 
rily been  determined  by  the  climatic  conditions  of  the 
countries  where  travelers  have  journeyed.  The  known 
methods  of  transportation  may  be  briefly  summarized 
as  follows:  Riding  or  driving  horses,  mules,  asses, 
oxen,  camels,  elephants,  dromedaries,  reindeer,  dogs, 
sometimes  ostrich  riding  among  Africans  of  the  inte- 
rior; snow  skating  in  Lapland;  skating  on  frozen  ca- 
nals in  Holland,  with  bandies  on  the  head ;  and  lastly, 
oriental  palanquins.  These  methods  have  often  in- 
volved  the  use  of  peculiar  vehicles,  such  as  the  Syrian 
ox:cart,  the  two- wheeled  French  brounette,  the  Rus- 
sian telega,  which  is  a  rapid  cart, — or  the  many  mod- 
ifications of  vehicles  seen  in  all  ages. 

I  take  occasion  here  to  say  that  under  the  principle 
of  eminent  domain  the  State  can  condemn  a  rail  way's 
franchise  or  any  of  its  vested  rights  as  well  as  any 
other  property.  All  classes  of  property  are  subject  to 
the  law  of  eminent  domain.  The  railway  franchises 
are  not  more  sacred,  nor  are  they  held  by  rights  more 
inviolable,  than  any  other  property.  I  deem  it  unnec- 
essary to  give  any  citations  to  legal  authorities  on  so 


THE   RAILWAY    PROBLEM.  61 

authorized  to  build  at  the  outset,  and  in 
the  original  charters  it  was  plainly  in- 
tended that  the  railway  companies  should 
not  have  a  monopoly  of  the  track.  In 
the  older  grants  there  was  a  plain  decla- 
ration that  the  only  monopoly  given  to 
the  companies  was  the  right  to  charge  the 
public  reasonable  tolls  for  operating  their 
trains  over  the  roads.  However,  no  matter 
how  plain  this  intention  may  have  been, 
the  wealthy  men  who  owned  the  roads 
soon  smothered  out  every  possibility  of 
putting  the  theory  into  actual  practice, 
and  in  truth  the  companies  at  once  as- 
sumed absolute  control  of  the  roads,  roll- 
ing stock,  and  all  appurtenances.  Not 
only  so,  but  the  legislation  of  the  country 
is  at  their  pleasure. 

You    have    heard    the  standing  joke, 


plain  a  proposition;  but  no  sound  lawyer  will  deny  it. 
Whosoever  desires  to  study  the  origin  of  railways 
will  do  well  to  get  the  early  charters,  in  which  the 
intent  was  plain  that  the  exclusive  right  to  own 
and  operate  trains  on  the  highway  was  not  recognized, 
[See  law  of  eminent  domain.] 


62  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

which  has  been  repeated  for  many  years 
in  the  Pennsylvania  Legislature,  when  a 
member  should  see  fit  to  move  an  adjourn- 
ment of  the  House.  Uniformly  he  would 
say,  "Mr.  Speaker:  Since  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Railway  Company  has  no  more 
business  for  this  body  to  transact,  I  now 
move  we  adjourn."  No  wonder  that  a 
prominent  railway  manager  once  said, 
that  if  the  people  knew  the  "  ins "  and 
"  outs  "  of  this  despicable  system  of  robbery 
in  the  name  of  vested  rights,  "  The  bare- 
footed militia  would  charge  down  from 
the  hills  a'nd  tear  up  the  tracks." 

Who  shall  say  that  heartless  discrimi- 
nations, selfish  freight  rates,  pooling, 
stock-gambling,  bulling  and  bearing  the 
market,  charging  the  traffic  all  it  will  bear, 
which  means  to  draw  the  last  drop  of 
blood  from  the  people,  who  shall  say  that 
these  and  like  false  conditions,  have  not 
had  much  to  do  with  the  unequal  and 
cruel  distribution  of  wealth  in  this  coun- 
try, especially  with  the  depression  of  the 


THE   RAILWAY   PROBLEM.  63 

farming  classes  who,  according  to  statis- 
tics, get  less  than  their  share  of  the  coun- 
try's production?* 

It  cannot  be  disputed  or  gainsaid  in 
any  way,  that  there  can  be  no  thorough  com- 
petition between  independent  railroad  compa- 
nies operating  trains  on  different  highways, 
each  company  owning  the  powerful  monopoly 
of  its  own  line.  If  there  is  ever  to  be 
thorough  and  honest  competition,  such  as 
will  bring  down  the  cost  of  transportation, 
it  must  be,  not  between  railway  companies, 
each  of  which  has  its  own  special  chain  of 
stations,  with  but  one  competing  point  to 
every  nine  stations,  averaged  on  the  best 
roads,  but  between  trains  operated  by  sepa- 
rate companies  on  a  common  public  highway 
where  rates  have,  by  opposition,  been  re- 

*  The  average  per  capita  earnings  of  the  business 
population  is  $34.80  each  per  month.  The  farm  la- 
borer gets  but  $22.29  without  board,  and  the  farmer 
himself  but  little  more  for  his  time,  when  interest  on 
his  investments  is  deducted.  These  estimates  are  fur- 
nished by  Mr.  J.  R.  Dodge,  of  the  National  Agricult- 
ural Bureau.  The  average  is  of  wages  paid  in  various 
States. 


64  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

duced  as  near  as  possible  to  first  cost  or  a 
fair  minimum.*  However,  the  chief  bene- 
fit to  be  reaped  from  competition,  after 
the  highway  shall  be  in  fact  emancipated, 
is  in  the  increase  of  the  number  of  trains 
that  will  use  the  road,  thereby  dividing  the 
expense  of  maintaining  the  track  between 
the  largest  possible  number  of  trains,  and, 
therefore,  between  the  largest  possible 
number  of  travelers  or  tons  of  freight. 
In  other  words,  the  people,  who  must,  under 
the  present  system,  always  pay  interest  on 
the  inflated  sum  total  of  railway  invest- 
ments, will  be  given,  under  the  system  of 
sovereign  ownership  of  the  highway  itself, 
numerous  trains  at  rates  which,  compared 

*  "  On  the  first  day  of  January,  1887,  there  were, 
according  to  the  Chief  of  the  Bureau  of  Statistics, 
33,694  railroad  stations  in  the  United  States,  of  which 
2,778  were  junction  points,  *.  e.t  are  points  where 
there  are  more  than  one  railroad,  leaving  30,916  sta- 
tions where  there  is  but  one  railroad." — Speech  of 
Stnafor  Cullom,  Jan.  17,  1887. 

When  we  consider  that  many  of  these  junction 
points  were  on  roads  not  having  even  a  terminus  in 
common,  it  is  evident  that  the  field  of  competition  is 
relatively  small. 


THE   RAILWAY    PROBLEM.  65 

with  the  present  tariff  lists,  seem  ridicu- 
lously low.  The  distinction  between  Gov- 
ernment ownership  of  the  tracks  and 
rolling-stock,  coupled  with  Government 
management  of  the  entire  railway  system, 
and  the  soveriegn  control  of  the  track  only, 
must  never  be  lost  sight  of.  .  This  distinc- 
tion is  essentially  fundamental,  and  lies  at 
the  basis  of  a  thorough  conception  of  the 
philosophy  of  the  highway.* 

*The  business  of  owning  and  operating  trains,  disci- 
plining men  and  carrying  on  the  many  details  of  pas- 
senger and  freight  transportation  is  one  thing,  a  pursuit 
separate  and  distinct  from  any  other,  and  character- 
ized by  peculiar  skill  and  requirements;  the  pursuit  of 
owning  the  railway  track  (if  that  conveys  to  the  mind 
any  idea  of  complex  activity)  is  another  and  wholly 
different  affair.  It  is  this  latter  passive  and  equitable 
ownership,  which  is  the  province  of  the  State.  The 
railway  business,  operation  of  trains,  ownership  of 
rolling  stock,  etc.,  etc.,  belongs  to  private  companies. 
The  State  should  not  meddle  with  that  at  all.  Sov- 
ereignty should  own  the  highway  and  throw  it  open 
to  citizen  companies.  It  would  not  follow  that  all 
men  would  be  fit  to  own  and  operate  trains  any  more 
than  that  all  men  are  fit  to  print  the  reports  of  the  Su- 
preme Court  of  the  State  or  to  repair  broken  watches. 
Practicability  would  limit  the  business  to  safe  men, 

5 


66  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

Two  of  the  most  famous  railway  kings 
of  the  century,  one  of  whom  was  Gould,  in 

while  demand  and  supply  would  regulate  numbers, 
and  weed  out  a  superfluity.  As  heretofore  said,  the 
idea  expressly  embraced  in  all  the  early  charters  of 
railroad  companies  was  that  one  company  should  own 
the  highway,  and  allow  the  public  its  use.  The  right 
to  take  tolls  was  granted,  but  not  the  right  to  exclude 
other  companies  or  carriers.  Any  student  can  look 
this  matter  up.  See  Redfield  on  Railways,  and  see 
decisions  of  Atlantic  States.  This  statement  is  a  mat- 
ter of  history  that  may  be  readily  verified  and  it  may 
be  found  in  many  decisions.  To  dwell  too  much 
upon  weary  and  useless  references  is  not  my  purpose. 
According  to  the  most  reliable  railway  authority  in 
the  United  States — "Poor's  Manual" — there  is  an 
over-capitalization  of  more  than  four  billion  dollars  in 
American  railway  investments.  By  a  fictitious  system 
called  "stock  watering,"  these  giants  of  American 
commerce  have  inflated  the  values  of  their  roads, 
equipments,  and  total  outlay  to  such  an  enormous  ex- 
tent that  the  per  cent,  which  they  make  does  seem 
rather  small.  However,  when  they  tell  us  that  they 
have  made  3^  per  cent,  on  the  investment  of  a  given 
year,  that  per  cent,  must  be  multiplied  by  two  or 
three  to  get  at  the  truth.  According  to  Poor,  the  net 
earnings  of  the  roads  for  1S83  was  nine  per  cent,  of  their 
cost.  By  the  report  of  a  New  York  Legislative  In- 
vestigating Committee,  it  seems  that  the  New  York 
Central  and  Hudson  River  Railway  Company  had  in- 


THE   RAILWAY    PROBLEM.  67 

addressing  the  New  York  Legislature  rela- 
tive to  franchises,  spoke  of  the  subject  in 
this  light  and  said:  "It  is  the  primary 
duty  of  the  State  to  furnish  highways, 

creased  its  capital  one  hundred  and  forty-six  per  cent, 
by  this  infamous  and  fictitious  policy.  The  Erie 
Railway  Company  had  watered  its  st  >ck  over  seventy 
per  cent.  The  Pennsylvania  Railway  Company  had, 
by  the  infamous  process  of  increasing  its  investments, 
by  pretended  outside  interests  in  other  companies, 
swelled  its  wealth  until  its  excess  of  stock  was  enor- 
mous; and  when  it  said  it  had  cleared  8  per  cent,  in 
the  year  1884,  the  truth  is  it  had  cleared  17  per  cent. 
The  great  Western  roads,  called  Granger  Lines,  have 
committed  equally  gross  frauds.  The  Union  Pacific 
road,  according  to  the  testimony  of  Mr.  Charles  Fran- 
cis Adams,  has  been  guilty  of  enormous  inflation  to 
deceive  the  people;  and  this  road  owes  the  people 
sixty  million  dollars,  on  which  it  has  not  paid  one- 
third  of  the  low  interest  due  by  its  obligations. 

According  to  Mr.  John  Swan,  who  has  written  a 
book  that  attracted  some  attention,  entitled,  "An  In- 
vestor's Notes  on  American  Railroads,"  (and  at  one 
time  general  mannger  of  the  Alabama  and  Great  South- 
ern Railroad,  and  a  friend  of  the  present  system,)  by 
far  the  larger  per  cent,  of  the  capital  invested  in  our 
railroads  is  owned  by  foreigners,  who  are  ignorant  of 
our  affairs,  and  careless  of  our  rights;  they  do  not  be- 
long to  this  soil,  nor  sympathize  with  the  people  of 
this  country. 


68  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR    BREAD. 

whether  roads,  turnpikes,  canals,  or  rail- 
roads." Singularly  they  added,  "The 
State  alone  having  the  right  of  eminent 
domain." 

The  best  train  dispatchers  with  whom 
I  have  conversed  tell  me  that  sovereign 
ownership  of  the  road-bed,  is  eminently 
practicable,  and  that  any  good  railway 
man  could  readily  arrange  the  details  'of 
management.  In  fact,  the  same  thing  is 
practiced  every  day.  Have  you  never 
known  two  or  three  companies  to  jointly 
own  one  track  of  ten,  twenty,  thirty,  or 
one  hundred  miles?  Such  ownership  is 
common,  and  on  these  roads  the  compa- 
nies run  independent  locomotives,  with 
their  own  engineers  and  rolling  stock. 
Two  great  roads  use  the  track  between 
Newark  and  Columbus,  Ohio.  The  Pitts- 
burg,  Ft.  Wayne  and  Chicago  has  also 
used  tracks  jointly  with  other  companies. 
On  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  I  once 
counted  cars  of  more  than  a  dozen  inde- 
pendent companies,  but  all  were  operated 
by  a  common  train  dispatcher.  The  pre- 


THE   RAILWAY    PROBLEM.  69 

tense  that  the  rolling  stock  and  the  high- 
way must  be  owned  by  one  company  to 
insure  safety  is  the  ultimatum  of  nonsense. 
Can  a  solitary  reason  be  given  for  the  ne- 
cessity of  such  dual  ownership?  Of  course, 
many  roads  which  now  possess  niggardly- 
maintained  single  tracks  would  need  to  be 
extended  by  the  addition  of  two  or  three 
parallel  tracks.  Other  details  which, 
readily  occur  to  any  sensible  man  would 
need  to  be  skillfully  arranged ;  but  to  say 
that  the  plan  is  impossible,  contradicts  the 
opinion  of  many  eminent  and  practical 
railway  men,  as  well  as  the  practices  which 
may  be  seen  on  scores  of  roads  throughout 
the  United  States. 

But  even  under  the  present  system,  a  re- 
duction of  rates  would  be  followed  by  in- 
creased receipts  and  profits  to  the  com- 
pany. The  lesson  of  the  Post-office  De- 
partment, which  diminished  postage  to 
increase  receipts,  has  not  been  followed 
largely  enough  by  the  railroads.  "  Poor's 
Manual,"  the  standard  compendium  of 
railway  figures,  shows  that  freight  rates 


70  THE   STRUGGLE    FOR    BREAD. 

have  decreased  68  per  cent,  in  the  past 
25  years,  but  the  earnings  of  the  compa- 
nies have  increased  72  per  cent.  On  the 
western  roads  a  reduction  of  40  per  cent, 
within  a  few  years  increased  the  earnings 
nearly  one  hundred  per  cent.  As  a  gen- 
eral rule,  a  decrease  in  the  price  of  such 
commodities  as  postage  and  fares  multi- 
plies receipts  in  an  inverse  ratio. 

The  railroad  laws  of  nearly  every  State 
are  carelessly  drawn,  and  even  where  leg- 
islation has  been  wisely  pursued  it  is  ex- 
ceedingly difficult  of  enforcement,  owing 
to  the  power  which  railway  companies 
wield  in  high  places. 

Railway  corporations  are  creatures  of 
the  State,  and  the  question  has  of  late 
years  assumed  this  form:  Either  the 
State  must  control  the  railroads,  or  the 
railroads  will  control  the  State.  Frequent 
attempts  to  control  the  roads  in  the  gen- 
eral interest,  both  in  Europe  and  America, 
show  that  it  requires  many  statutes  and 
officers,  much  interference,  and  the  exercise 
of  many  objectionable  powers  of  Govern- 


THE   RAILWAY   PROBLEM.  71 

ment,  even  to  modify  the  abuses  of  monop- 
oly. In  view  of  the  enlarged  demands  of 
the  times,  even  with  the  maxim  that  the 
Government  should  not  interfere  where  in- 
dividuals can  do  as  well,  the  exigency  for 
more  specific  limitations  arid  more  direct 
control  has  already  arisen.* 

*NOTK. — The  word  robbery  used  in  relation  to  rail- 
way c'  arges  has  been  applied  by  such  eminent  writers 
as  the  author  of  "  Wayland's  Political  Economy." 
Some  thinkers  suggest  that  the  present  tariffs  on 
freight  and  \  assenger  traffic  are  the  natural  outgrowth 
of  the  monopoly  system,  and  that  they  have  already 
reacted  disastrously  upon  the  system  and  limited  it  to 
very  narrow  dimensions  compared  to  what  it  would 
be  had  it  been  differently  administered.  The  present 
methods  are  essentially  restrictive.  The  masses 
travel  but  little,  and  millions  of  tons  of  freight  that 
should  be  in  motion  are  at  rest,  although  the  roads 
are  often  working  to  their  full  capacity.  Were  the 
line  sand  facilities  quadruppled  and  rates  reduced  so 
that  at  a  minimum  profit  no  stock  should  remain  idle, 
the  lines,  even  under  the  present  system,  might  earn 
more  than  now.  This  tended  to  illustration  during 
the  late  rate-war  from  Missouri  River  points  to  the 
Pacific,  although  the  roads  could  not  accommodate 
the  demands;  and  to  deprive  way  or  local  travel  of 
low  rates,  they  absolutely  exacted  an  overcharge  to  be 
returned  as  rebate.  Suspecting  the  companies'  mo- 


72  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR    BRp:AD. 

The  folly  of  the  argument  that  our  pros- 
perity is  due  to  the  railway  management 

tives,  the  rural  population  refused  the  tickets  at  five 
dollars  each.  Even  then  the  roads  that  had  beln  do- 
ing almost  nothing  had  to  curtail  the  ticket  sales  be- 
cause overcrowded,  and  the  receipts  from  this  crippled 
business,  managed  on  a  narrow  basis,  averaged  from 
twenty  to  forty  thousand  dollars  daily.  Yet  so  igno- 
rant are  the  masses  as  to  the  cost  of  railway  transpor- 
tation that  it  is  often  supposed  that  the  roads  lost 
money,  whereas,  on  the  contrary,  those  cut-rates  stim- 
ulated a  traffic  which  replenished  their  funds. 

Speaking  of  the  first  railway  in  England,  "Chambers' 
Encyclopedia"  says:  "Now  began  that  course  of  com- 
mercial enterprise,  unregulated,  and  often  wasteful, 
which  has  since  assumed  such  importance.  Refrain- 
ing from  all  control  over  railway  operations,  the  Gov- 
ernment left  speculators  to  carry  lines  anywhere  or  any- 
how that  Parliament  could  be  persuaded  to  sanction. 
The  result  has  been  in  many  places  a  complication  of 
competing  lines  on  no  principle  of  economy  or  enlight- 
ened foresight.  Abandoned,  as  it  were,  to  the  audac- 
ity of  promoters,  AND  THE  MERE  BRUTE  FORCE  OF  CAP- 
ITAL, schemes,  good,  bad,  and  indifferent,  had  to  fight 
their  way  at  cost  almost  exceeding  belief.  .  .  Mak- 
ing every  allowance,  therefore,  for  the  high, social 
value  of  the  railway  system,  it  has  certainly  reached  a 
point  of  despotic  overbearaiice  that  requires  some 
species  of  control  more  effectual  than  the  present  sys- 
tem," In  1874  a  Parliament  committee  reported  that 


THE   RAILWAY   PROBLEM.  73 

is  only  surpassed  by  the  superstition  of 
those  old  witches  who,  each  time  they 
glanced  out  of  their  windows,  saw  a  fune- 
ral procession,  and  believed  it  was  the  act 
of  looking  out  of  the  window  which  called 
forth  the  procession.  It  tests  and  proves 
the  greatness  of  this  country,  that  prosper- 
ity has  come  like  the  sunshine  and  the 
rain  in  spite  of  the  present  inequalities  of 
the  railway  system,  which  has  threatened 
our  welfare  in  a  thousand  directions  at 
every  step.  True  enough,  the  roads  have 
opened  to  the  markets  millions  of  acres  of 
rich  lands,  and  made  possible  the  growth 
of  cities  where  were  solitudes,  yet  there  is 
in  the  entire  list  of  railway  achievements 
no  excuse  to  warrant  the  gift  of  these  iron 
highways  to  corporations  that  rob  the 
people  of  benefits  which  the  inventor  of 
the  steam  engine  meant  to  be  a  gift  to  the 
human  race. 


"no  means  have  yet  been  devised  by  which  competi- 
tion can  be  maintained." 


CHAPTER  IV. 

PRIVATE   OWNERSHIP  OF  LNAD. 

FALLACIES  OF  HENRY  GEORGE'S  THEORY  THAT  ONE 
OF  THE  CAUSES  OF  POVKRTY  IS  THE  PRIVATE  OwN- 
ERSHIP  OF  LAND  —How  CIVILIZATION  AND  THE  IN- 
CREASE OF  PROSPERITY  HAVE  BEEN  AIDED  BY  OWN- 
ERSHIP OF  LAND— SOME  IDEAS  ON  LAND  AND  THE 
RIGHTS  OF  PROPERTY. 

Henry  George,  a  florid  writer,  has  of 
late  years  created  considerable  interest  in 
the  land  question  by  his  "  Progress  and 
Poverty, "  a  book  full  of  good  intentions, 
but  singularly  free  from  any  references 
to  facts  of  history  or  statistics  to  uphold  its 
radical  conclusions.  At  the  outset  Mr. 
George  repeats  the  old  statement  of  Karl 
Marx  that  the  poor  are  growing  poorer  and 
more  numerous  and  the  rich  richer  and 
fewer.  He  nowhere  cites  income  tables, 
nor  is  there  throughout  his  argument  a 
single  comparison  of  price-levels  of  food 
products  with  previous  years.  He  nowhere 
(74) 


PRIVATE    OWNERSHIP    OF    LAND.         75 

shows  what  rental  incomes  amount  to, 
nor  does  he  give  an  idea  of  the  ratio  of 
rents  to  incomes. 

The  proposition  that  there  can  be  no 
private  ownership  of  land  without  injus- 
tice to  the  masses,  was  formulated  by 
French  economists  and  by  Herbert  Spencer 
long  before  Henry  George's  appearance.* 

The  fallacies  of  the  theory  propounded 
by  Henry  George  are  so  numerous  that  a 
cool  perusal  of  his  book  is  sufficient  to  con- 
demn its  argument  and  conclusions  as 
vicious  and  misleading ;  and  yet  his  style 
is  so  catchy,  his  good  wishes  for  mankind 
are  so  heart-felt,  and  his  pictures  of  poverty 


*NpTE. — Mr.  George  told  me  in  1887  that  at  a  ban- 
quet in  London,  at  which  both  Herbert  Spencer  and 
Mr.  George  were  guests,  Mr.  Spencer  repudiated  his 
early  position  on  the  land  problem,  as  announced  in  "So- 
cial Statics."  It  seems  that  the  English  philospher  also 
went  to  the  trouble  to  write  an  article  for  a  London 
periodical  setting  forth  that  his  early  position  was  all 
wrong.  In  "  Social  Statics,"  the  reader  will  remem- 
ber that  Spencer's  position  was  that  private  ownership 
is  inequitable.  Mr.  George  was  so  vexed  that  he  kept 
away  from  the  philosopher,  and  left  the  banquet  early 
in  the  evening. 


76  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

so  pathetic,  that  thousands  of  misguided 
workingmen  have  hailed  him  as  the  Mo- 
ses whose  footsteps  were  turned  toward  the 
land  of  sunshine  and  gold.  Not  only  so, 
but  a  surprisingly  great  number  of  law- 
yers and  well-informed  men  and  women 
in  the  higher  walks  of  life  have  grown 
garrulous  arid  vehement  in  trying  to  ac- 
complish the  reformation  of  the  world  ac- 
cording to  the  Henry  George  method. 

I  once  knew  a  young  college  professor 
who  became  interested  in  "  Progress  and 
Poverty,"  but  he  ran  upon  some  snags 
that  puzzled  him.  He  wrote  to  the  au- 
thor of  the  book,  arid  Mr.  George  promptly 
answered  him,  simply  assuring  him  that 
having  read  the  book,  his  mind  would 
soon  be  filled  with  the  truths  of  the  new 
gospel,  so  that  he  could  accomplish  great 
good  among  his  fellow-men.  In  conclu- 
sion, he  begged  the  young  man  to  read 
"  Progress  and  Poverty "  again,  and  as- 
sured him  that  his  mind  would  then  be 
at  ease.  After  the  third  reading  the  dis- 
ciple told  me  that  he  wondered  what  there 


PRIVATE    OWNERSHIP    OF    LAND.         77 

was  in  the  book  to  attract  so  much  atten- 
tion, for  he  found  that  it  ignored  data 
that  were  essential,  and  jumped  at  conclu- 
sions without  evidence. 

The  example  is  but  one  in  thousands 
where  men  were  fascinated  by  the  first 
reading  of  the  Jpook  and  afterwards  repu- 
diated its  teachings.  Much  less  is  heard 
of  the  author  and  of  the  book  than  for- 
merly, and  both  will  doubtless  pass  into 
obscurity  with  the  thousand  other  falla- 
cies that  belong  to  the  age  of  sensation- 
alism. 

Mr.  George's  foundation  stone  is  rent. 
He  holds  that  all  the  advances  made  by 
capital  and  labor  are  swallowed  up  by 
rent,  which  is  levied  by  the  land  barons, 
and  yet  he  gives  no  statistics  or  ratios  of 
land  values  or  rents.  He  believes  that  the 
increase  in  the  value  of  land  is  taken  from 
the  hard  earnings  of  toil,  and  that  the 
tendency  of  rent  is  to  leave  labor  a  bare 
living  margin,  and  to  allow  to  capital 
only  that  interest  which  will  induce  it  to 
seek  investment. 


78  THE    STrtOGGLE-FOR    BREAD. 

"The  persistence  of  poverty  amid  ad- 
vancing wealth,"  to  use  his  words,  or  the 
increase  of  progress  and  poverty  in  an  age 
of  civilization,  Mr.  George  would  prevent 
by  prohibiting  private  property  in  land, 
either  by  taxing  land  until  nobody  would 
want  to  own  it,  except  for  active  use,  or  by 
some  direct  proceeding  to  vest  its  owner- 
ship in  the  whole  people — in  sovereignty. 

Mr.  George  then  draws  pictures  of  the 
millennium.  "The  whole  enormous  weight 
of  taxation  in  the  form  of  rent  would  be 
lifted  from  productive  industry."  He  be- 
holds the  "  rise  of  wages; "  he  sees  parks 
for  the  poor,  while  "  heat,  light,  and  mo- 
tive power,  as  well  as  water,  might  be  con- 
ducted through  the  streets  at  public  ex- 
pense." He  also  sees  free  museums  arid 
vast  libraries,  and  beholds  flowers  in  the 
wilderness,  while  the  air  of  his  ideal  world 
is  filled  with  music. 

The  universal  panacea  for  all  industrial- 
ills  thus  prescribed  by  the  apostle  of  the 
"  no  land  theory,"  has  been  used  indis- 
criminately for  all  the  sprains  and  aches 


PRIVATE   OWNERSHIP    OF   LAND.        79 

to  which  the  flesh  of  labor  is  heir.  More 
penetrating  than  "Mustang  Liniment"  or 
"  Wizard  Oil,"  it  has  been  more  believed 
in  than  Col,  Mulberry  Sellers'  mysterious 
"  eye-water." 

Mr.  George  would  impose  heavy  bur- 
dens on  the  ownership  of  the  soil.  Sup- 
pose that  under  his  theory  a  farmer,  desir- 
ing to  raise  corn  and  hogs,  should  buy  one 
hundred  and  sixty  acres  of  land.  That 
land  would  be  subjected  to  taxation  suffi- 
cient to  meet  all  purposes  of  public  rev- 
enue, and  to  a  further  taxation  sufficient 
to  give  the  people  the  wonderful  things 
of  which  he  speaks — fire,  light,  music,  li- 
braries, etc.,  etc.,  etc.  But  would  the  farmer, 
thus  burdened  by  rent,  be  able  to  sell 
his  hogs  and  corn  at  prices  now  current? 
Would  he  not  necessarily  have  to  add  the 
rent  or  taxes  to  the  selling  price  of  his  prod- 
ucts, and  thus  shift  the  burden  upon  the 
buyer?  Would  a  plan  that  excuses  the 
owrners  of  government  bonds,  and  dia- 
monds, and  luxurious  paraphernalia  from 
all  taxation  better  the  condition  of  the 


BO  THE   STUGGLE   FOR    BREAD. 

poor?  Here  is  the  chasm  into  which  Mr. 
George's  logic  carries  him,  and  from  which 
no  life-saving  service  of  theory  can  rescue 
him! 

That  there  have  been  special  instances 
of  grave  wrongs  in  the  speculative  "cor- 
nering" of  the  land,  everybody  admits, 
and  no  one  would  object  to  a  law 
prohibiting  combinations  among  lanci 
owners  to  keep  up  prices.  The  theory 
of  Mr.  Homer  Reed,  a  student  of  the 
land  question,  is  much  wiser  than  that 
of  Henry  George.  Mr.  Reed  holds  that 
there  should  be  a  "  homestead  unit "  of 
160  or  200  acres,  and  that  this  amount 
of  land,  if  used  for  farming  purposes, 
should  be  taxed  so  Hghtly  as  to  be  al- 
most exempt  from  burdens.  Then  he 
would  levy  ten  times  as  high  a  tax  on 
lands  held  for  speculation.  In  this  way 
he  would  encourage  agricultural  pursuits 
and  discourage  the  speculative  ownership 
of  real  estate.  But  Mr.  Reed  and  Henry 
George  labor  under  the  mistake  that  there 
is  a  great  scarcity  of  land  in  the  United 


PRIVATE   OWNERSHIP   OP    LAND.        81 

States,  whereas,  relatively,  there  is  more 
accessible  land  here  now  than  in.  1850. 
Prior  to  the  completion  of  transconti- 
nental railways,  the  land  opened  to  white 
labor  for  agricultural  purposes  lay  east  of 
the  Missouri  River  and  north  of  Mason  and 
Dixon's  line.  The  West  was  the  home  of 
the  buffalo  and  Indian,  while  the  South 
was  overcrowded  with  slave  labor  and  not 
available  for  white  workingmen.  The 
completion  of  the  Union  Pacific  Railroad 
brought  millions  of  acres  of  rich  land 
within  a  few  days  of  New  York  harbor, 
and  at  prices  that  were  a  shock  to  the  real 
estate  markets  of  the  world-. 

Mr.  George's  theory  falls  little  short  of 
socialism,  and  as  the  Nun  of  Kenmare 
(Sister  Frances  M.  Clare)  has  said,  "  The 
grand  mistake  lies  in  supposing  that 
the  equalization  of  land  property  will 
prove  an  equivalent  to,  or  a  substitution 
f(5r,  the  equalization  of  capital.  If  all  the 
capital  in  the  world  were  equally  divided 
to-morrow  morning  there  would  be  ine- 
quality in  twenty-four  hours,"  and  she  not 
6 


82  THE   STRUGGLE    FOK    BREAD. 

inaptly  adds,  "The  communist  who  says 
that  all  property  is  theft  is  more  practi- 
cal." 

Dr.  W.  T.  Harris,  who  is  probably  the 
foremost  thinker  to-day  living,  and  whose 
opinions  on  questions  of  social  science  are 
authority,  holds  that  the  abolition  of  pri- 
vate property  in  land  will  "  lead  towards 
the  degeneration  of  all  higher  spiritual 
interests  and  to  the  utter  ruin  of  all  that 
has  been  achieved,  even  in  the  realm  of 
productive  industry."  His  "Right  of 
Property  and  The  Ownership  of  Land" 
is  a  complete  demonstration  of  the  utter 
worthlessness  of  Mr.  George's  deductions. 

Let  us  take  into  consideration  some  facts 
and  figures  that  lie  at  the  foundation  of 
the  question,  so  that  it  may  be  determined 
how  great  are  the  burdens  imposed  upon 
the  masses — especially  upon  capital  and 
labor — by  land,  or,  as  the  new  disciple 
puts  it,  by  rent. 

By  the  census  of  1880  the  amount  of  all 
property  in  the  United  States  was  more 
than  43,000,000,000  of  dollars,  as  shown 


PRIVATE    OWNERSHIP    OF   LAND.        83 

by  the  following  carefully  prepared  table 
of  items: — 

Billioivs  of  Dollars. 

Farms 10,197 

Residence  and  business  property „ . .  9,881 

Railroads  (over-capitalized    estimate) 5,536 

LiveStock  and  farming  implements 2,406 

Stock  of  production  on  hand,    agricultural 

and  manufacturing 6, 160 

Churches,    Schools,    Asylums   and    public 

buildings 2,000 

Household  furniture . .   5,000 

Telegraphs,  shipping  and  canals 419 

Mines,  quarries,  oil  wells  and   ^   average 

product 781 

Bullion 612 

Miscellaneous 650 

Total 43,642,000,000 

Residence  and  business  property  are  put 
at  little  less  value  than  farms.  "  The  cen- 
sus gives  no  clue,"  says  Dr.  Harris,  "as  to 
the  relative  value  of  land  and  buildings. 
It  would  be  certain,  however,  that  the  land 
could  not  exceed  in  value  20,000,000,000, 
as  that  is  the  total  value  of  all  real  estate." 

In  Massachusetts  complete  assessment 
rolls,  making  allowances  for  the  differ- 
ences between  true  and  assessed  valua- 


84 


THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 


tions,  show  that  land  is  44  per  cent,  and 
buildings  56  per  cent,  of  the  assessed  value 
of  real  estate. 

It  is  estimated  from  the  census  returns 
and  other  data,  that  the  land  values  of 
the  Eastern  and  Middle  States  are  2,948,- 
000,000,  and  the  value  of  buildings  is 
3,766,000,000. 

The  following  carefully  prepared  table 
shows  the  values  for  the  entire  country: — 


Ratio  of 
Build- 
ings to 
Land. 

Buildin's 
Millions. 

Land. 
Millions. 

Eastern  and  Middle 

56-44 

$3  766 

$3  766 

Southern  Section  

40-60 

671 

671 

Western  States  and  Territories. 

40-60 

1  857 

1  857 

Total 

$6  294 

96  294 

Mulhall,  in  his  invaluable  "  Dictionary 
of  Statistics,"  estimates  land  and  forest 
of  the  United  States  at  $10,750,000,000, 
while  Dr.  Harris  puts  the  true  valuation 
of  buildings,  lots,  and  farms  at  $10,000,- 
000,000,  calling  the  true  value  65  per  cent, 
of  the  assessed  value.  He  says:  "Count- 
ing rent  at  4  per  cent  on  the  actual  val- 


PRIVATE   OWNERSHIP   OF   LAND.        85 

nation  (which  would  be  6.1  per  cent,  on 
assessed  value),  we  have  the  sum  of  $400,- 
000,000  as  the  total  rental  of  land  in  the 
United  States.  Four  per  cent,  is  a  larger 
average  rent  than  land  brings  in,  because 
land  owners  raise  prices  on  land  when  it 
produces  more  than  3  per  cent,  after  pay- 
ing taxes." 

He  then  shows  that  for  a  population  of 
50,000,000  (census  1880)  the  ground  rent 
-is  $8  apiece  per  year,  or  two  and  one-lifth 
cents  per  day,  not  a  distressingly  large 
part  of  the  forty  cents  per  day,  which  is 
the  average  earnings  per  capita  of  the 
population.  According  to  Mr.  Atkinson, 
the  statistician,  the  average  income  per 
capitals  fifty-five  cents.*  This  gives  the 
ground  rent  of  each  person  as  amount- 
ing to  one  twenty-fifth  of  his  average 
earnings.  By  Dr.  Harris'  estimate  it  is 
one-eighteenth.  Even  in  Great  Britain 
and  Ireland,  ruled  by  landlords,  the  aver- 

*NOTE. — Dr.  Harris  estimates  our  annual  production 
at  $7,300,000,000,  but  Mulhall's  estimate  is  $7,100,- 
000,000. 


86  THE   STRUGGLE    FOR   BREAD. 

age  rent  per  inhabitant  is  shown   to  be 
two  and  one-half  cents  per  day. 

As  completely  and  clearly  dissipating 
Henry  George's  statement  that  land  be- 
comes so  valuable  that  the  masses  must 
ever  be  oppressed,  it  is  demonstrated  that 
the  relative  increase  of  land  in  the  United 
Kingdom  in  the  thirty  years  from  1850 
to  1880  was  23  per  cent.  During  the 
same  period  houses  gained  138  per  cent, 
in  aggregate  value.*  In  the  United  States, 
as  heretofore  shown,  the  prices  of  Eastern 
farm  lands  have  been  kept  down  by  com- 
petition with  the  vast  acres  in  the  far 
West,  which  railroads  have  made  avail- 
able for  use.  In  this  connection  the  evils 
of  the  railway  system,  as  pointed  out  in 

*Land  in  1801  was  990  millions  sterling  and  in  1882 
18SO  millions  sterling,  hardly  doubling  in  80  years ; 
but  the  value  of  houses  increased  from  306  millions  to 
2280  millions,  more  than  seven  times  the  amount, 
The  relative  increase  in  incomes,  from  manufactures, 
mercantile  employments,  and  professions  (in  which 
the  incomes  have  more  than  doubled)  is  thus  shown  : 
1850  1800  1870  188D 

100  125  174  228 


PRIVATE    OWNERSHIP    OF    LAND.         87 

the  chapter  on  railroads,  are  seen  to  be  a 
menace  to  the  welfare  of  the  farmer,  and 
to  partly  prevent  the  West  and  South 
from  competing  with  the  East.  The  far- 
mers of  distant  regions  are  charged  such 
extortionate  freight  rates  that  their  pro- 
ducts are  sometimes  hardly  worth  ship- 
ping.* 

Recurring  to  the  ground  rent,  seen  to 
be  two  and  one-fifth  cents  per  day,  let  me 
ask  whether  this  sum  is  so  great  as  to  be 
a  burden  to  the  masses?  The  net  earn- 
ings of  the  country's  railroads  for  1884 
were  $336,911,884,  a  sum  equal  to  about 
nine  per  cent,  of  their  cost,  and  while  the 
true  value  of  the  roads  is  but  half  as  great 
a  sum  as  the  true  value  of  the  land  of  the 
United  States,  their  earnings  amounted 
to  nearly  as  much.  Let  any  fair  minded 


*NoTE. — Capital  has  its  hand  on  the  throat  of  land 
property,  contrary  to  the  theory  of  Mr.  George,  who 
supposes  that  land  has  the  advantage  over  capital  and 
labor.  Capital  frees  labor  fro'n  tyranny  of  land  and 
the  present  ratio  of  land  to  the  total  wealth  of  the 
United  States  is  about  1  to  4£. — Harris. 


88  THE   STRUGGLE    FOR    BREAD. 

person  here  behold  that  the  wastes  and 
burdens  represented  in  the  railway  earn- 
ings do  not  fall  directly  on  the  entire  pop- 
ulation, but  chiefly  on  the  producers  of 
agricultural  and  manufacturing  products. 
Great  as  are  the  abuses  of  our  railway 
system,  the  railroads  have  prevented  build- 
ing sites  from  running  to  ruinous  figures, 
for  they  have  brought  the  central  lot  into 
competition  with  suburban  lands.  The 
cable  car,  the  elevated  railway,  the  local 
trains,  in  all  the  great  suburbs  unite  the 
crowded  mart  and  the  quiet  country  home. 
"This  very  god  Steam,"  as  Emerson  calls 
it,  though  in  bad  company  with  greedy 
barons  and  tormented  by  infinite  abuses, 
stands  as  a  safeguard  between  the  people 
and  Mr.  George's  imaginary  Gorgon.  Mr. 
George's  intentions  are  good  enough.  He 
would  induce  the  poor  to  go  on  farms,  but 
he  forgets  that  there  are  too  many  farmers 
now,  for  with  our  restricted  home  markets 
prices  are  low,  and  the  average  earnings  of 
farmers  is  but  $22.29  per  month,  when 
the  average  of  all  is  $34.80. 


PRIVATE   OWNERSHIP   OF    LAND.        89 

Mr.  Mallock  has  made  a  strong  point 
against  the  single  tax  tfreory.  He  says,  in 
his  "Property  and  Progress,"  that  rents 
would  not  become  less  under  the  State 
landlord  plan.  He  then  asks  how  Mr. 
George's  plan  can  help  the  poor.  How 
would  the  State  as  a  landlord  benefit  men 
who  wished  for  land  in  a  district  already 
occupied,  or  men  too  poor  to  pay  any  rent 
at  all.  If  all  the  land  on  a  given  street 
were  occupied,  the  street  would  be  barred 
to  any  new  tradesman;  nor  would  the  fact 
of  the  street  being  really  national  prop- 
erty give  him  any  more  right  to  the  use 
of  it  than  if  it  were  wholly  another  citi- 
zen's land  under  the  present  system. 
And  how  would  the  poor  be  benefited? 
If  a  man  cannot  pay  his  heavy  ground 
rent  to  the  State  in  the  form  of  an  enor- 
mous tax,  then  the  State  will  evict  him  as 
quickly  as  would  a  private  landlord. 

Suppose  that  a  man  rents  a  tract  of  land 
from  the  State  and  when  a  city  grows  up 
it  raises  in  value.  How  will  the  State's 
tenant  be  situated  now?  He  cannot  be 


90  THE   STRUGGLE    FOR    BREAD. 

evicted  by  the  State,  and  he  cannot  have 
his  rent  raised  on  what  are  his  own  im- 
provements. Though  he  pays  the  State 
no  more  for  his  land  than  before  he  in- 
duced people  to  build  a  town  on  it,  he 
knows  that  others  would  pay  him  more, 
and  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  him  from 
holding  the  land  on  speculation.  He 
might  sub-let  it.  But  Mr.  George  an- 
swers that  the  highest  bidder  gets  the  land. 
But  a  piece  of  land  is  not  in  the  market 
at  any  given  moment.  When  it  is  knocked 
down  to  a  buyer  he  cannot  be  ousted  at 
the  pleasure  of  the  State.  Otherwise,  if 
any  Naboth  at  any  moment  might  have 
his  vineyard  bought  over  his  head  by  any 
speculating  Ahab,  the  system  would  de- 
stroy all  improvements  and  result  in  the 
triumph  of  the  money  power  in  the  end.* 

*  Laud  investments  are  not  so  profitable  as  invest- 
ments in  trade  with  equal  business  sagacity.  By  the 
year  1912  the  $24  paid  for  Manhattan  Island  in  1612, 
at  6  per  cent,  compound  interest  for  the  300  years  in- 
tervening, would  come  to  over  $800,000,000,  a  sum 
quite  equal  to  the  value  of  all  the  land  in  New  York 
City  in  1912,  judging  from  its  present  price  and  rate 
of  increase. — Harris. 


PRIVATE   OWNERSHIP   OF   LAND.        91 

In  1850,  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  supported  in 
whole  or  part  1,308,000  paupers  (one  in  twenty-one  of 
the  population) ;  in  1860,  only  973,000.  In  1880,  the 
total  number  of  paupers  had  fallen  to  1,016,000. 
The  poor  rates  amounted  to  nearly  one  per  cent,  in 
1870,  but  only  to  .84  in  1880. 

Population  has  increased  unprecedentedly  since  the 
epoch  of  labor-saving  machines;  but  means  of  subsist- 
ence have  increased  in  a  far  greater  ratio  than  popu- 
lation. — Harris. 

The  most  fertile  lands  are  the  last  to  be  occupied, 
nay,  are  not  occupied  yet  because  human  combina 
tion  and  the  application  of  machinery  is  not  able 
to  cope  with  them.  Witness  the  entire  Amazon  River 
ba  in,  two-thirds  as  large  as  all  Europe,  and  as  yet 
scarcely  any  of  it  subdued  for  agricultural  uses.  Its 
vegetable  growth  is  so  luxuriant  that  all  higher  ani- 
mal life  is  utterly  dwarfed  by  its  over-powering  pres- 
ence. Only  reptiles,  etc.,  .  .  .  can  hold  their 
own  against  such  vegetable  life.  Mechanical  inven- 
tion will  some  day  tame  the  Amazon  Valley  and  pro- 
duce from  it  ten  times  as  much  food  as  is  to-day  pro- 
duced on  the  entire  earth. — Harris. 

Thorold  Rogers  shows  us  that  in  England  the  soil 
has  increased  in  fertility,  so  that  four  bushels  of  wheat 
are  now  produced  where  only  one  was  raised  two 
hundred  years  ago.  Beef  cattle  now  weigh  1,200 
pounds,  instead  of  400  pounds  as  then.  A  sheep 
yields  seven  to  nine  pounds  of  wool  where  it  yielded 
only  one  pound  of  very  inferior  quality,  half  hair, 
half  wool. — Harris. 


92  THk   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

While  statistics  prove  that  the  wealth  of  the  country 
is  increasing  much  faster  than  the  population,  it  is  a 
favorite  argument  i  f  certain  representatives  of  capital 
that  the  laborer  is  getting  all  he  can  expect  under  the 
natural  order  of  things.  This  statement  is  justified 
by  the  argument  of  Malthus,  long  since  called  the 
Malthusian  theory,  namely,  that  population  increases 
faster  than  wealth;  that  the  earth  does  not  produce 
enough  to  allow  an  increase  of  wages.  The  theory  is 
neither  proved  by  experience,  accepted  by  represent- 
ative economists,  nor  confirmad  by  the  better  reason- 
ing ;  because  everything  that  furnishes  man  food  and 
raiment  has  the  power  to  increase  many  fold,  while 
population  doubles  on  the  average  but  once  in  every 
twenty -five  years,  and  by  some  authorities  once  in 
twenty-nine  years.  Aside  from  this,  there  are  other 
forms  of  wealth  that  increase  at  a  high  rate,  especi  »lly 
since  the  introduction  of  labor-saving  machinery,  by 
which  in  many  instances,  one  man  does  the  work  for- 
merly accomplished  by  a  hundred.  Machinery  annu- 
ally adds  millions  to  the  wealth  of  the  United  States. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  famines  in  Ireland  and 
India  weie  caused  "by  the  pressure  of  population  on 
subsistence,"  and  that  these  instances  confirm  the 
Malthusian  theory.  It  is  strange  that  such  citations 
should  ever  be  made  in  view  of  the  fact  that  in  every 
great  famine  in  these  countries,  the  crops  of  the  season 
were  sufficient  to  more  than  have  supported  the  mill- 
ions who  starved.  The  very  roads  of  Ireland,  over 
which  loads  of  food  guarded  by  soldiers  were  carried, 
to  be  exported  to  English  owners,  were  crowded  with 


PRIVATE   OWNERSHIP   OF   LAND.        93 

men,  women,  and  children,  dying  from  starvation, 
while  trenches  along  the  road- ways  were  filled  with 
the  dead.  Extortion,  misrule,  criminal  disregard  of 
the  suffering  of  others,  and  not  the  poverty  of  nature, 
caused  the  death  of  millions  in  those  famines.  Again, 
population  is  almost  a  fixed  quantity,  ebbing  here  and 
flowing  there,  but  from  the  earliest  ages  averaging  in 
the  aggregate  about  the  same. — Author. 

Again  I  urge  the  importance  of  Dr.  W.  T.  Harris' 
pamphlet,  "  The  Right  of  Property  and  the  Ownership 
of  Land. "  It  is  published  by  Cupples,  Hurd  &  Co., 
Boston.  Seethe  following  from  it: — 

"  The  function  of  industry  in  the  perfection  of  man 
becomes  clear  when  we  consider   the  true   nature  of  . 
property. 

"  Property  is  the  means  for  transferring  the  products 
of  the  will  of  the  individual  to  the  race,  and  at  the 
same  time  the  means  of  his  participation  in  the  prod- 
ucts of  the  race.  Human  labor  cannot  be  stored  up 
and  transferred  except  in  the  form  of  property.  A 
thing  becomes  property  when  (a)  it  is  held  in  posses- 
sion by  one  individual  or  a  company  of  individuals; 
(b)  and  that  possession  is  recognized,  confirmed,  and 
defended  by  the  community. 

* '  Take  away  private  property  and  each  one's  indi- 
viduality, as  manifested  in  his  private  wants,  gets  in 
the  way  of  the  individuality  of  everyone  else.  Uni- 
versal collision  results  in  the  necessity  of  the  subju- 
gation of  all  wills  in  the  community  to  one  will;  hence 
arises  despotic  absolutism  as  the  lowest  and  rudest 
form  of  rational  society,  the  relation  of  master  and 
slave. 


94  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

"The  possession  of  private  property  makes  possible 
the  exercise  of  many  wills  in  tho  community,  without 
collision  with  each  other.  It  is  a  greater  invention 
than  the  discovery  of  the  primitive  arts  of  fire  and 
metallurgy.  It  is  the  discovery  of  the  possibility  of 
human  freedom. 

"With  private  property  in  land  there  is  secured  a 
province  within  which  the  individual  becomes  sov- 
ereign. Where  the  land  is  the  property  of  the  com- 
munity, each  one's  will  in  some  degree  lacks  a  sphere 
in  which  it  is  sovereign.  But  when  the  individual  ob- 
tains the  perfect  sovereignty  over  his  own  land,  then 
the  will  of  the  community  does  not  share  with  him 
nor  subordinate  him  any  longer,  but  re-enforces  his 
will. 

"If  the  present  national  and  local  taxes  were  all 
assessed  on  land,  land  could  not  avoid  the  taxes  by  be- 
coming cheap.  If  the  value  of  the  land  sank  to  five 
per  cent,  of  its  present  value,  the  Government  would 
simply  be  obliged  on  Mr.  George's  plan  to  raise  the 
rate  of  taxation  to  twenty  times  the  rate  before 
assessed,  and  thus  make  it  pay  every  year  150  per 
cent,  of  its  total  value,  in  order  to  get  the  requisite 
amount  of  revenue  that  it  collects  at  present.  There 
could  be  no  question  of  collecting  larger  revenues  than 
at  present — revenues  that  would  supply  music  and 
dancing,  balls,  theatres,  shooting  galleries,  gymna- 
siums, and  such  institutions  for  public  benefit  as  Mr. 
George  proposes,  in  addition  to  those  furnished  now — 
because  the  taxation  of  1  nd  sufficient  to  produce  the 
present  revenue  would  be  seven  and  one-half  per  cent. 


PRIVATE    OWNERSHIP   OF   LAND.        95 

on  its   present   valuation,    and  this   alone    would   be 
sufficient  to  crush  farmers  completely. 

"In  conclusion  let  us  ask,  in  what  way  would  the 
new  plan  of  collecting  taxes  help  the  poor  ?  At  first 
there  would  be  no  diminution  in  the  amount  of  rent 
paid  for  houses.  After  a  little  while,  however,  the  rent 
of  the  largest  and  most  expensive  houses  in  the  center 
of  cities  would  fall  somewhat,  because  only  the  land 
and  not  the  building  is  to  be  taxed.  But  the  rent  of 
small  cottages  and  cheap  tenement  houses  would 
greatly  increase  as  a  consequence  of  the  attempt  of 
land-owners  to  recover  a  portion  of  the  tax  that 
would  fall  with  undue  weight  on  their  property.  The 
consequence  would  be  that  the  poor  would  be  far 
worse  off  than  now  as  regards  the  rent  of  dwellings. 
They  would  pay  relatively  more  than  the  rich." 


CHAPTER  V. 
REVOLUTIONARY  THEORIES. 

THE  AMERICAN  FORM  OF  GOVERNMENT  UPHELD—  THE 
PRINCIPLES  OF  SOCIALISM  TESTED — THE  RED  FLAG 
ARMY'S  ILL-CONSIDERED  DEMANDS — A  REASON  FOR 
RICH  AND  POOR — ANARCHY  AND  ITS  ERRORS — 
OTHER  CONSIDERATIONS. 

At  the  outset  let  me  say  that  the  enemies 
of  social  order  need  not  expect  to  find 
comfort  in  these  pages.  I  believe  that  any 
government  that  denies  the  right  of  its 
citizens  to  gain  wealth  by  private  industry, 
in  proper  vocations,  not  only  retards  the 
normal  development  of  production  by  its 
tyranny,  but  also  seriously  dwarfs  the  de- 
velopment of  strong  character  and  strikes 
down  one  of  the  greatest  bulwarks  of  edu- 
cation— the  school  of  experience.  Com- 
petition in  trade  may  be  so  directed  by 
wise  laws  as  to  prevent  its  becoming  a 
menace  to  the  welfare  of  the  masses. 
Capital  should,  in  all  its  united  and  indi- 

(96) 


REVOLUTIONARY   THEORIES.  97 

vidual  activities,  be  placed  under  whole^ 
some  laws,  and  so  directed  that  no  aggre- 
gations of  wealth  wield  autocratic  and  un- 
bridled power. 

There  can  be  no  well-grounded  com- 
plaint, as  Lyman  Abbott  has  so  aptly  illus- 
trated, because  A  is  worth  $100,000  while 
B  is  not  worth  $100,  if  the  inequalities  of 
their  savings  are  proportioned  to  the  in- 
equalities of  the  services  which  they  ren- 
dered to  society,  and  of  their  frugality, 
sagacity,  etc.,  etc.*  Their  respective  abil- 
ities, training,  and  industry,  might  ac- 
count for  many  of  the  disparities  of  their 
situations  in  life. 

But  socialism  ignores  all  of  these  natu- 
ral differences  and  proposes  to  overthrow 
the  rewards  of  individual  merit  and 
measure  all  men's  wealth  by  public  sched- 
ule. Its  application  would  wipe  out  all 
natural  differences  of  character,  annul  all 
the  hivings  of  culture,  and  confine  weak 
and  strong  in  one  sphere. 

*NOTE. — See  this  more  fully  treated  in  Chapter 
VIII,  where  profit-sharing  is  explained. 

7 


98  THE   STRUGGLE    FOR    BREAD. 

Can  there  be  any  doubt  that  any  scheme 
that  gives  the  government  entire  control 
of  industries  would  essentially  destroy  the 
freedom  of  individuals  ?  What  would  be- 
come, as  Theodore  Woolsey  asks,  in  his 
"Communism  and  Socialism,"  of  the 
power  of  rising  by  enterprise,  soundness 
of  judgment,  unbounded  energy,  and 
other  qualities,  which  not  only  aid  the  in- 
dividual in  his  advancement,  but  contrib- 
ute to  the  improvement  of  general  society? 

Is  it  not  true  that  when  the  individual 
is  robbed  of  his  earnings  by  the  state  he  is 
retarded  in  his  power  of  surpassing  the 
achievements  of  the  average  man  ?  If  the 
oak  takes  root  among  the  rocks  and  grows 
strong  in  the  storm,  why  does  not  the 
same  discipline  make  men  strong?  If  the 
state  does  all  the  managing,  is  responsi- 
ble for  all  the  failures  and  successes,  what 
becomes  of  the  schooling  of  action  as  seen 
in  the  storm  of  deeds? 

Under  socialism,  as  defined  by  its  lead- 
ers, society  is  to  become  a  vast  partner- 
ship and  individual  wealth  is  to  cease. 


REVOLUTIONARY   THEORIES.  99 

Weitling  says  that  there  must  be  a  "de- 
struction of  the  existing  state  organiza- 
tion. "  Bakunin  the  anarchist,  Lassalle, 
Hyndman,  Herr  Liebnect  and  others  are 
not  less  radical  in  their  demands  for  a 
reformation,  and  in  their  remedies  for  ex- 
isting evils.  Adolf  Held  wants  social- 
ism "to  subordinate  the  individual  will  to 
the  community."  Janet  says  that  social- 
ism teaches  that  the  state  has  the  right  to 
correct  the  inequality  of  wealth  which  ex- 
ists among  men  and  to  legally  establish  a 
balance  by  taking  from  those  who  have 
too  much  in  order  to  give  to  those  who 
have  not  enough."  In  the  same  tone 
Laveleye  "aims  at  introducing  greater 
equality  in  social  conditions."  Karl  Marx, 
Dr.  Aveling,  Fourier,  and  Robert  Owen 
also  ask  for  the  destruction  of  competition 
and  the  substitution  of  co-operation  under 
state  direction,  in  the  production  of  wealth, 
while  others  define  all  private  property  as 
theft. 

Aside  from  the  dismal  results  of  social- 
ism, it  would  not  reach  the  goal  pictured 


100  THE   STRUGGLE    FOR   BREAD. 

by  the  leaders.  It  would  level  all  men  to 
an  average — that  of  mediocrity — and  de- 
stroy those  stirring  incentives  to  individual 
effort  which  have  made  glorious  the  pages 
of  every  civilized  nation's  history.  It 
would  also  fail  to  give  the  laboring  men 
of  the  United  States  a  larger  share  than 
they  now  get,  of  the  annual  production. 

Let  us  take  an  inventory  of  men's 
earnings  and  then  spread  the  socialistic 
feast  before  the  laborer.  Once  more  to 
that  bible  of  facts,  the  census  reports! 

As  shown  by  the  tables  of  Mr.  Joseph 
Niinmo,  chief  of  the  Bureau  of  Statistics, 
the  value  of  the  annual  products  of  the 
United  States  is  $7,300,000,000,  or  forty 
cents  a  day  to  each  inhabitant.  Mulhall, 
a  careful  compiler  of  statistics,  who  is 
most  clear-headed  in  his  estimates,*  puts 
the  annual  product  of  the  United  States 
at  $7,100,000,000,  which  would  reduce  the 
average  income  a  fraction.  At  forty  cents 
per  day  as  the  share  of  each  inhabitant, 

*NOTE. — See   his   "  History    of  Prices."     See   also 
Chapter  IV,  of  this  book. 


REVOLUTIONARY   THEORIES.          101 

each  person  engaged  in  business*  wotdd 
earn  $1.55  daily,  since  every  employed 
person  supports  two  and  nine-tenths  per- 
sons. This  sum  (which  is  $34.80  per 
month)  would  be  the  earnings  of  each 
laborer  if  production  were  annually  dis- 
tributed equally,  and  if  nothing  went  to 
capital  as  interest,  nothing  to  land  as  rent, 
and  nothing  for  supervision  or  superior 
skill.  [The  estimate  is  that  of  Dr.  W.  T. 
Harris,  heretofore  quoted].  The  forego- 
ing division  is  substantially  the  distribu- 
tion demanded  by  socialists,  and  anarch- 
ists also,  according  to  Proudhon,  Janet, 
Aveling  and  others. 

*See  Appendix,  and  turn  te  table  showing  the  busi- 
ness population  of  the  United  States.  It  is  not  prob- 
able that  the  production  would  be  so  great  if  men  were 
not  spurred  on  to  activity  by  the  stern  necessities  as 
well  as  the  prizes  of  life.  Under  the  present  system 
every  man  has  a  hope  that  he  may  some  day  draw  some 
of  life's  prizes.  If  fed  by  the  government,  as  blanket 
Indians  of  the  plains  are  cared  for,  many  men  would 
not  work  at  all.  The  opportunities  of  unequal  wealth 
are  needful  to  encourage  the  strongest  and  stimulate 
the  spirit  of  venture  that  makes  possible  new  con- 
quests. 


102  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

Dr.  W.  T.  Harris  not  inaptly  says,  in 
this  connection:  "Inasmuch  as  skilled 
labor  receives  as  wages  from  $2.00  to  $4.00 
per  day  in  most  of  the  States,  while  com- 
mon laborers  in  manufacturing  establish- 
ments receive  $1.25  to  $1.50,  the  wages 
of  labor  in  the  manufacturing  and  me- 
chanical industries  is  already  above  the 
average  received  by  all,  rich  and  poor,  to 
the  extent  of  from  fifteen  cents  to  $2.65 
per  day." 

The  real  problem  is,  therefore,  not  so 
broad  as  socialists  state  it,  nor  is  it  to  be 
solved  by  the  revolutionists.  The  ques- 
tion is  how  to  place  capital  and  labor,  un- 
der the  present  system  of  private  enter- 
prise, on  a  basis  that  will  insure  to  each 
peace  and  fair  prosperity.  All  attempts 
to  place  worth  and  worthlessness  on  the 
level  of  communism  will  prove  unpopular 
in  this  country.  Industry  must  be  left 
free  to  be  fostered  by  private  enterprise, 
under  wise  laws,  and  while  the  exigency 
has  arisen  in  some  cases  for  the  sovereign 
to  step  in  between  rapacious  capital  and 


REVOLUTIONARY  THEORIES.    103 

hungry  labor,  under  the  broad  duty  im- 
plied in  "  the  welfare  of  the  people,"  the 
dawn  of  the  day  of  socialism  is  not  near. 
There  are  some  fields  in  which  the  gov- 
ernment might  well  interfere  for  the  wel- 
fare of  the  people  and  the  better  develop- 
ment of  the  country,  but  not  in  most  of 
the  pursuits  now  conducted  by  individual 
enterprise.*  It  may  be  admitted  that 
there  is  a  certain  socialistic  tendency  in  all 
modern  governments.  Whenever  funds 
are  expended  for  the  poor,  and  whenever 
sovereignty  steps  in  to  direct  vast  enter- 
prises, there  is  to  that  extent  socialism. 
To  such  a  degree  as  attempted  by  most 
governments  the  tendency  does  no  harm. 
Our  post-office  system  is  socialistic,  and 
so  are  most  police  regulations  under  the 
police  power  of  the  state,  such  as  boards 
of  health.  The  power  of  eminent  domain 
might  also  be  classified  in  the  same  way. 

*NOTE. — See  chapter  on  railways,  where  this  idea  is 
enlarged. 

In  all  ages  of  the  world  of  which  we  have  any  rec- 
ord there  have  been  attempts  to  reconstruct  society 


104  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR    BREAD. 

on  a  socialistic  basis.  Plato  advocated  a  mild  form  of 
socialism. 

Socialists  are  all  agreed,  under  whatever  name  they 
are  known,  that  socialism  alone  can  give  all  men  a  fair 
opportunity  in  the  world,  and  that  under  the  present 
system  of  individualism,  or  "  one-sided  freedom,  '  the 
tendency  of  civilization  is  to  oppress  the  poor  and  bring 
the  working  classes  under  subjection  so  that  they  will 
finally  become  precarious  wage  workers.  There  is  no 
very  close  distinction  between  communism  and  so- 
cialism. Both  aim  to  deliver  the  working  people  from 
what  they  term  the  subjection  of  capital.  They 
want  to  "  terminate  the  divorce  of  the  workers  from 
the  natural  sources  of  subsistence  and  of  culture." 
This  principle  thus  stated  by  the  "Encyclopedia 
Britannica,"  seems  common  to  all  forms  of  socialism. 

Sir  Thomas  More's  "  Utopia,"  in  1516,  was  a  social- 
istic idea.  Saint  Simon,  Robert  Owen,  and  Fourier, 
all  wrote  on  socialism  and  also  tried  to  establish  ideal 
colonies.  Their  schemes  failed,  the  members  quar- 
reled, and  the  influence  of  their  various  movements 
was,  except  in  a  theoretical  way,  short  lived.  Robert 
Owen  laid  his  scheme  before  the  House  of  Commons 
in  1817.  The  speculations  of  Saint  Simon  took  a 
definite  direction  the  same  year. 

The  acknowledged  father  of  anarchism  is  Proudhon, 
but  the  greatest  apostle  of  the  system  was  Michael 
Bakunin,  a  Russian,  born  in  1814.  The  anarchists 
would  reach  equality  of  condition  by  abolishing  '*  all 
legislation,  all  authority,  all  influence,  privileged, 
patented,  official  and  legal. "  They  demand  bread  for 


REVOLUTIONARY   THEORIES.  105 

all,  science  for  all,  work  for  all.  Anarchism  is  classed 
with  socialism,  or  as  a  branch  of  it,  by  the  best  writ- 
trs.  See  "  Encyclopedia  Britannica." 

Herbert  Spencer  aptly  says  of  the  socialists: — 
"Impressed  with  the  miseries  existing  under  our 
present  social  arrangements,  and  not  regarding  these 
miseries  as  caused  by  the  ill-working  of  a  human  nature 
but  partially  adapted  to  the  social  state,  they  imagine 
them  to  be  at  once  curable  by  this  or  that  re-arrange- 
ment. Yet,  even  did  their  plans  succeed,  it  could 
only  be  by  substituting  one  kind  of  evil  for  another. 
A  little  deliberate  thought  would  show  that  under 
their  proposed  arrangements  their  liber  ties  must  be  sur- 
rendered in  proportion  as  their  material  welfares  were 
cared  for.  For  no  form  of  co-operation,  small  or  great, 
can  be  carried  on  without  regulation  and  an  implied 
submission  to  the  regulating  agencies.  Even  one  of 
their  own  organizations  for  effecting  social  changes 
yields  them  proof.  It  is  compelled  to  have  its  coun- 
cils, its  local  and  general  officers,  its  authoritative 
leaders,  who  must  be  obeyed  under  penalty  of  con- 
fusion and  failure." 

The  great  thinker  goes  on  at  some  length  to  show 
how  grumbling  and  restiveness  would  grow,  and  com- 
plaints of  tyranny  increase.  One's  only  escape  from 
the  slavery,  would  be  to  leave  the  country.  See  his 
article  in  Popular  Science  Monthly  for  April,  1884. 
The  key  note  is  struck  when  Mr.  Spencer  says:  "The 
welfare  of  a  society  and  the  justice  of  its  arrangements 
are  at  bottom  dependent  on  the  characters  of  its 
members  ;  and  improvement  in  neither  can  take  place 


106          THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

without  that  improvement  in  character  which  results 
from  carrying  on  peaceful  industry  under  the  restraints 
imposed  by  an  orderly  social  life.  The  belief,  not 
only  of  the  socialists,  but  also  of  those  so-called  liber- 
als who  are  diligently  preparing  the  way  for  them,  is 
that  by  due  skill  an  ill-working  humanity  may  be 
framed  into  well- working  institutions.  It  is  a  delu- 
sion. The  defective  natures  of  citizens  will  show 
themselves  in  the  bad-acting  of  whatever  social  struct- 
ures they  are  arranged  into.  There  is  no  political  al- 
chemy by  which  you  can  get  golden  conduct  out  of 
leaden  instincts." 

The  Russian  village  community,  (known  as  the 
"MIR")  is  a  practical  example  of  socialism.  It  is 
said  that  so  poor  are  the  peasants  that  they  wear  a 
single  leather  suit  of  clothing  for  twelve  years,  day 
and  night.  They  earn  from  four  to  six  cents  per  day, 
and  the  spirit  of  individualism  is  crushed  out  and 
rendered  subordinate  to  the  will  of  the  whole  commun- 
ity as  expressed  by  the  starosta  or  village  elder  chosen 
by  the  village  assemblies.  The  noblest  and  most  ad- 
venturous men  are  banished  to  Siberia  or  sent  to  the 
army  for  life.  It  is  one  of  the  most  backward  coun- 
tries in  the  world,  and  its  socialistic  civilization,  as 
seen  in  village  communities,  is  but  little  above  the 
condition  of  those  wandering  nomads  who  burned  new 
forests  to  prepare  grain  fields,  and  then  abandoned 
the  fields  for  another  forest.  In  1601  the  Czar  ter- 
minated the  custom  by  fixing  the  peasants  to  the  soil 
as  serfs,  and  the  communism  of  the  village  was  substi- 
tuted. 


REVOLUTIONARY   THEORIES.  107 

The  "Encyclopedia  Britannica"  says:  The  whole  of 
the  land  occupied  by  a  Russian  village, — whoever  be 
the  landlord  recognized  by  law, — is  considered  as  be- 
longing to  the  village  community  as  a  whole,  the  sep- 
arate members  of  the  community  having  only  the 
right  of  temporary  possesssion  of  such  part  of  the 
common  property  as  allowed  to  them  by  the  Mir,  in 
proportion  to  their  working  power. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

MODERN  TRUSTS. 

A  FEW  SIMPLE  STATEMENTS  AS  TO  WHAT  THEY  ARE 
AND  How  THEY  EXIST  —THEIR  ILLEGALITY  AS  LONG 
AGO  AS  THE  TIME  OF  LORL>  COKE. 

It  is  an  old  maxim  of  economists  that 
where  combination  is  possible  competition 
is  impossible.  In  England  where  there 
were  formerly  262  railway  companies  but 
eleven  now  remain,  and  in  the  United 
States  the  large  roads  have  swallowed  up 
the  small  ones.  It  seems  to  be  a  law  of 
nature  that  the  strong  of  all  creatures  de- 
vour the  weak.  The  monopoly  of  talons 
and  beak  over  the  inoffensive  flesh  of  an- 
imals is  not  greater  than  that  power  of 
cunning  that  great  combinations  of  capi- 
tal wield  over  the  small  and  weak.  In  the 
railways  of  the  world  this  law  has  had 
signal  illustration — in  France,  where  six 
companies  ran  all  the  others  out,  and  as 
before  cited,  in  England,  and  in  America. 

(108) 


MODERN    TRUSTS.  109 

In  trade  similar  combinations  have  now 
come  in  to  feed  upon  the  less  powerful 
ones.  In  California  one  cracker  company 
about  runs  the  business,  so  in  fruit-can- 
ning interests.  In  Pennsylvania  coal  and 
oil  monopolies  ruthlessly  rob  the  masses, 
and  in  every  state  are  examples  of  this 
oppression.  Hon.  William  W.  Cook  gives 
a  vivid  picture  of  these  evils.  He  says : — 

"During  the  past  fifteen  years  there  has 
been  a  rapid  growth  of  manufactories. 
This  growth  has  extended  into  all  branches 
of  manufacturing  business.  It  has  created 
competition,  caused  an  overproduction, 
and  reduced  prices  frequently  below  the 
cost  of  the  article  produced.  Several 
years  ago  it  became  evident  to  manu- 
facturers that  they  must  pursue  one  of  two 
courses.  They  had  to  continue  the  war  of 
prices  until  the  weaker  concerns  went  to 
th£  wall,  and  a  few  large  establishments 
arose  on  their  ruins,  or  they  had  to  com- 
bine, limit  production,  and  control  prices. 
The  latter  plan  was  adopted. 

"  Another  cause  was  at  work.     A  great 


110  THE    STRUGGLE    FOR    BREAD. 

monopoly  in  oil  had  arisen  and  prospered. 
It  had  amassed  millions  of  money.  It 
had  practically  crushed  out  all  competi- 
tion. It  had  succeeded  beyond  the  dreams 
even  of  those  who  originated  it.  It  had 
worked  out  a  plan  and  policy  of  organiza- 
tion. It  was  'a  success/  and  the  mode  of 
combination  which  first  succeeded  in  the 
Standard  Oil  Trust,  and  in  its  offspring, 
the  American  Cotton  Oil  Trust,  set  an  ex- 
ample for  manufacturers,  which  they  were 
not  slow  to  follow. 

"  There  have  been  various  attempts  of 
the  manufacturers  to  combine.  The  first 
plan  was  by.  contracts,  whereby  all  the 
parties  were  to  sell  at  a  fixed  price  or 
through  a  common  agent.  Five  years 
ago  these  contracts  existed  in  many 
branches  o^busiiiess.  They  corresponded 
in  principle  and  purpose  to  the  railroad 
'pools/  but,  like  them,  they  were  a  failnre. 
The  courts  would  not  sustain  or  enforce 
them,  and  the  members  would  not  live  up 
to  them.  They  were  short  lived.  The 
parties  would  not  act  in  good  faith.  Se- 


MODERN   TRUSTS.  Ill 

cret  breaches  were  made,  or  the  whole 
agreement  was  openly  repudiated.  They 
fell  to  pieces.  Self-interest  was  the  only  co- 
hesive bond,  and  self-interest  sooner  or 
later  induced  one  or  more  to  abandon  and 
compete  with  the  combination  'pool.' 

"It  became  evident  that  a  stronger 
method  of  effecting  a  combination  must 
be  found.  It  must  be  a  method  which 
would  bind  fast  all  who  once  entered  into 
it.  It  must  take  the  management  and 
ownership  of  the  business  out  of  the 
hands  of  the  various  discordant  elements 
which  constituted  the  combination.  It 
must  be  based,  not  on  a  moral  obligation 
or  mere  agreement,  but  on  an  absolute 
right  of  property,  possession,  and  owner- 
ship, vested  in  the  combination  itself. 
The  old  method  of  combination  had  failed 
because  it  required  the  continuous  assent 
of  its  numerous  members.  The  new  com- 
bination could  succeed  only  by  depriving 
the  parties  of  the  power  to  withdraw 
their  assent.  A  scheme  that  would  fulfill 
these  requisites  was  not  easy  to  discover, 


112  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

but  it  was  found.  It  exists  in  the  modern 
1  Trust/ 

"A  l Trust '  is  a  combination  of  many 
competing  concerns  under  one  manage- 
ment, which  thereby  reduces  the  cost,  reg- 
ulates the  amount  of  production,  and  in- 
creases the  price  for  which  the  article  is 
sold.  It  is  either  a  monopoly  or  an  en- 
deavor to  establish  a  monopoly.  Its  pur- 
pose is  to  make  larger  profits  by  decreasing 
cost,  limiting  production,  and  increasing 
the  price  to  the  consumer.  This  is  ac- 
complished by  presenting  to  competitors 
the  alternative  of  joining  the  '  Trust'  or 
being  crushed  out.  Its  organization  is  in- 
tricate, secret,  and  subtle.  It  is  a  master- 
piece of  modern  ingenuity  and  fertility  of 
resource  It  is  a  product  of  the  highest 
order  of  Business  talent  and  executive 
ability.  It  is  at  once  a  monument  to 
American  genius  and  a  symbol  of  Ameri- 
can rapacity. 

"The  term  'Trust'  is  popularly  applied 
to  all  methods  of  effecting  a  combination 
in  trade.  It  is  used  to  designate  not  only 


MODERN   TRUSTS.  113 

the  most  recent  development  and  approved 
method  of  forming  the  combination,  but 
also  the  primitive  and  crude  contracts 
called 'pools.'" 

And  yet,  notwithstanding  the  existence 
of  all  these  trusts  in  the  United  States, 
the  law  clearly  holds  that  combinations  to 
restrict  production,  or  to  prevent  compe- 
tition, or  to  regulate  prices,  are  illegal  and 
void.  The  law  which  guards  public  inter- 
ests declares  that  the  welfare  of  the  State 
demands  that  parties  in  such  combinations 
shall  have  no  standing  in  the  courts. 
Lord  Coke,  that  unfailing  source  of  com- 
mon law  authority,  said  that  such  monop- 
olies led  to  three  disastrous  results :  an  in- 
crease in  price,  a  decrease  in  quality,  and 
the  impoverishment  of  artisans  and  oth- 
ers. 

But  aside  from  the  legal  view  there  is 
an  important  fact  to  be  considered  in  con- 
nection with  trusts.  There  is  no  other 
principal  to  sustain  them  than  that  which 
rests  upon  brute  force  of  money  and  the 
cunning  of  those  who  combine.  It  is  the 


114  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

argument  that  might  is  right,  and  on  that 
principle  old  tyrants  ruled  their  slaves. 
The  question  is,  how  long  will  the  Amer- 
ican people  stand  such  tyranny  ?  *  These 
enormous  trusts  have  already  drawn  with- 

*As  a  sample,  the  following  sugar  trust  membership 
roll  will  give  an  idea  of  the  extent  of  the  combination 
in  that  line  alone  » — 

THE  SUGAR  TRUST  AGREEMENT. 

-JDBJED.- 
THE  SUGAR    REFINERIES  COMPANY. 

The  undersigned,  namely: 

HAVEMEYER  &  ELDER, 

The  DE  CASTRO  &  DONNER  SUGAR  REFINING  COM- 
PANY, 

F.  0.  MATTHIESSEN  &  WEICHERS  SUGAR  REFINING 
COMPANY, 

HAVEMEYER  SUGAR  REFINING  COMPANY, 

BROOKLYN  SUGAR  REFINING  COMPANY, 

The  firm  of  DICK  &  MEYER, 

The  firm  of  MOLLER,  SIERCK  &  COMPANY, 

NORTH  RIVER  SUGAR  REFINING  COMPANY, 

The  firm  of  OXNARD  BROTHERS, 

THE  STANDARD  SUGAR  REFINERY, 

THE  BAY  STATE  SUGAR  REFINERY, 

THE  BOSTON  SUGAR  REFINING  COMPANY, 

THE  CONTINENTAL  SUGAR  REFINERY, 
and 

THE  REVERE  SUGAR  REFINERY, 


MODERN   TRUSTS.  115 

in  their  awful  grasp  a  large  part  of  the 
business  of  the  country,  as  will  be  seen  by 
a  list  of  the  various  business  enterprises 
embraced  in  trusts,  to  be  found  in  the  ap- 
pendix of  this  volume.  As  at  present  or- 
ganized these  institutions  defy  alike  press, 
legislatures,  courts,  and  people. 


CHAPTER    VII. 
THE  FUTURE  OF  LABOR 

THOUGHTS  ON  THE  POWER  or  MAN  AND  THE  RE- 
SOURCES OF  NATURE — CONQUERING  THE  ELEMENTS 
BY  COMBINATION  OF  NATURAL  FORCES. — LABOR- 
SAVING  MACHINERY  AND  THE  RE -ADJUSTMENT  OF 
HUMAN  VOCATIONS. — CULTURE  DEMANDED  OF  FUT- 
URE TOILERS 

If  there  is  one  plain  lesson  to  be  drawn 
from  the  history  of  the  past,  a  conclusion 
that  cannot  be  forgotten,  it  is  that  culture 
liberates  men  from  manual  toil.  The 
whole  trend  of  civilization  shows  that  as 
man  has  learned  how  to  conquer  nature 
by  invention  he  has  himself  been  freed 
from  irksome  toil.  Emerson  forcibly  ex- 
presses the  thought  in  his  remarkable  es- 
say on  "Civilization,"  where  he  says:— 

"  The  farmer  had  much  ill-temper,  la- 
ziness, and  shirking  to  endure  from  his 
hand  sawyers,  until  one  day  he  bethought 
him  to  put  his  saw-mill  on  the  edge  of  a 
water-fall;  and  the  river  never  tires  of 
(116) 


THE  FUTURE  OF  LABOR.      117 

turning  his  wheel.  ...  I  admire 
still  more  than  the  saw-mill  the  skill 
which,  on  the  seashore,  makes  the  tides 
drive  the  wheels  and  grind  corn,  and 
which  thus  engages  the  assistance  of  the 
moon,  like  a  hired  hand,  to  grind,  and 
wind,  and  pump,  and  saw,  and  split  stone, 
and  roll  iron.  Now  that  is  the  wisdom  of 
man,  in  every  instance  of  his  labor,  to 
hitch  his  wagon  to  a  star,  and  see  his 
chore  done  by  the  gods  themselves.  That 
is  the  way  we  are  strong,  by  borrowing 
the  might  of  the  elements.  The  forces  of 
steam,  gravity,  galvanism,  light,  magnets, 
wind,  fire,  serve  us  day  by  day,  and  cost 
us  nothing." 

Who  that  has  beheld  the  marvelous 
achievements  of  machinery  in  supplant- 
ing wage  workers  in  the  mechanic  arts 
has  not  asked,  "  What  is  to  be  the  out- 
come? What  will  become  of  men  when 
machines  do  the  work  of  production  and 
drive  workmen  from  the  shops  ?  "* 

*See  Chapter  II,  where  it  is  shown  that  the  increased 
production  has  made  possible  the  employment  of  the 


118  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD.  . 

The  history  of  human  vocations  dates 
back  to  a  time  when  the  majority  were 
hunters  or  fishermen,  and  when  ninety- 
nine  per  cent,  of  the  male  population  was 
required  in  those  active  pursuits  whose 
object  was  the  obtaining  of  food  and  rai- 
ment. Even  before  the  race  had  emerged 
from  the  condition  of  mere  cave-dwellers 
the  barbaric  women  attended  their  young 
while  the  savage  men  were  busy  in  their 
simple  work-day  world,  getting  the  rude 
necessaries  of  life.  In  those  early  times 
men  died  leaving  no  wealth  for  distribu- 
tion among  their  kin.  As  the  Sage  of  Con- 
cord forcibly  says,  "  A  man  in  a  cave  or  in 
a  camp,  a  nomad,  will  die  with  no  more 
estate  than  the  wolf  or  the  horse  leaves. 
But  so  simple  a  labor  as  a  house  being 
achieved,  his  enemies  are  kept  at  bay. 
He  is  safe  from  the  teeth  of  wild  animals, 
from  frost,  sunstroke,  and  weather;  and 
fine  faculties  begin  to  yield  their  fine  har- 


vast  increase  of  population  and  even  raised  their  scale 
of  wages.     Exact  figures  are  given  in  the  chapter. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  LABOR.      119 

vest.     Invention  and  art  are  born,  man- 
ners and  social  beauty  and  delight." 

Here  is  the  gleam  of  light  that  dawns 
and  gives  a  hint  that  new  pursuits  will  be 
called  forth  as  new  ages  come.  The  army 
of  progress  is  even  to-day  making  drafts 
for  more  men  and  women  to  minister  to 
the  wants  of  culture.  Girls  and  women 
now  have  opened  to  them  scores  of  fields 
of  industry  that  a  few  decades  ago  were 
unknown.  Behold  a  quarter  of  a  mil- 
lion operators  of  type- writers !  See  the 
inventor  of  the  telephone  giving  employ- 
ment to  hundreds  of  thousands,  and  so  on 
through  the  entire  list  of  human  inven- 
tions.* 


*  NOTE. —In  his  report  for  1886,  Charles  P.  Peck, 
Labor  Commissioner  of  New  York,  says: — 

"  One  of  the  notable  features  in  this  age  of  ma- 
chinery is  the  subdivision  of  labor,  and  this  condition 
reacts  on  our  workers.  Nor  is  this  confined  to  labor, 
for  there  is  a  constant  drift  towards  specialization  in 
all  departments  of  human  action.  The  great  man  in 
one  branch  of  knowledge  may  be  small  enough  in 
another.  So  with  trades.  And  in  this  lies  one  of  the 
obstacles  to  steady  and  remunerative  employment. 


120  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

There  are  thousands  in  the  community 
whose  pursuits  are  made  obsolete  by  the 

The  watch  trade  is  a  familiar  instance.  All  the  differ- 
ent parts  of  a  watch  are  produced  by  different  persons, 
and  with  such  intinitesimal  minuteness  and  absolute 
exactness  that  they  can  be  fitted  or  replaced  almost  at 
hap-hazard  by  the  expert  finisher.  Not  only,  however, 
in  the  fine  and  delicate  minutiae  of  a  watch  is  this  sub- 
division met;  it  is  found  in  coarser  articles.  The  sub- 
division of  labor  in  such  a  common-place  manufacture  as 
that  of  boots  and  shoes  is  mentioned  elsewhere,  and 
truth,  though  it  be,  seems  almost  incredible.  Every- 
where we  encounter  this  modern  peculiarity,  the  result 
of  machinery.  In  past  times  the  blacksmith  must  have 
been  a  wonderful  artist,  he  fabricated  everything 
from  a  nail  to  a  sword,  or  an  ornamental  bit  of  fine 
metal  work.  To-day  these  items  are  all  spread  abroad 
into  fifty  or  a  hundred  different  callings.  This  sub- 
division of  labor,  while  it  simplifies  products,  involves 
the  disadvantage  of  glutted  markets  and  lack  of  em- 
ployment. It  used  to  be  said  that  the  French  work- 
man was  better  than  the  English  workman  in  the 
facility  with  which  he  could  turn  round  and  do  good 
work  in  two  or  three  trades,  whereas  the  bold  Briton 
was  tied  to  one.  Hence  the  value  of  an  extension  of 
industries  and  increased  facilities  for  education  and 
employment,  industries  that  shall  involve  the  quality 
of  art  and  the  cultivation  of  taste  by  which,  as  is 
shown  elsewhere,  the  industrial  populations  of  Europe 
have  met  the  difficulties  of  '  hard  times/  whereas 


THE  FUTURE  OF  LABOR.      121 

skill  of  invention,  which  not  only  sub- 
divides trades,  but  calls  into  being  new  and 
complex  callings.  The  citizen  whose  in- 
genuity and  education  are  so  limited  that 
he  cannot  make  himself  useful  in  new 
trades  when  his  own  is  supplanted  by  iron 
fingers,  and  trained  arms,  and  the  spindles 
of  machinery,  must  work  at  a  continually 
increasing  disadvantage.  The  competition 
of  the  new  age  is  as  heartless  as  the  iron 
and  steel  of  which  the  machines  are  made. 
The  only  friend  of  the  laborer  in  such  a 
plight  is  the  fertility  of  his  own  resources, 
the  versatility  of  his  brain.  He  must 
have  tact  to  engage,  on  short  notice,  in 
some  higher  pursuit  or  fall  back  upon 
friends  or  public  charity  for  support.  To 
follow  the  obsolete  trade  would  be  as  un- 
remunerative  as  the  work  of  the  sewing 
woman  who  starves  in  a  garret  while  a 


they  would  otherwise  have  been  overwhelmed.  In- 
creased methods  of  employment  result  in  a  more  gen- 
eral diffusion  of  products  and  labor  earnings. " 

See  Dr.  Harris'  table  of  the  evolution  of  vocations, 
in  Appendix. 


122          THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

machine  laborer  makes  more  and  better 
stitches  in  a  few  hours  than  she  can  make 
in  a  week ;  or,  like  the  backwoodsman  try- 
ing to  compete,  by  aid  of  a  team  of  oxen, 
with  a  locomotive.  And  yet  there  are 
workingmen  who  occasionally  rise  up  in 
wrath  and  demolish  harvesting  machines 
that  reap  and  bind  the  grain,  and  there 
are  printers  who  would  sweep  from  the 
face  of  the  earth  every  type-setting  ma- 
chine; and  yet  to  retrograde  to  the  old 
era  of  wooden  ploughs  and  crude  utensils 
in  the  mechanic  arts,  would  be  the  height 
of  folly.  For  the  race  to  return  'to  its 
childhood  would  be  dear  compensation 
for  the  temporary  inconvenience  and 
even  penury  of  the  minority.  The  rem- 
edy is  in  a  better  brain  which  supplants 
hand  labor,  and  directs  or  even  invents 
the  machine  which  does  the  drudgery.* 


*  In  this  connection  it  is  interesting  to  see  what  uses 
are  being  made  of  magnetism  in  the  great  steel  works 
at  Cleveland,  Ohio.  A  large  electro  magnet  is  used, 
suspended  from  a  crane  to  pick  up  steel  bars  and  bil- 
lets. It  will  pick  up  800  pounds  and  drop  its  burden 


THE  FUTURE  OF  LABOR.      123 

To  be  able  to  do  only  those  things  which 
a  machine  can  do,  is  to  be  forever  at  the 


where  wanted,  by  the  touch  of  a  key,  the  movement 
of  the  crane  being  controlled  by  steam. 

The  Scientific  American  thus  decribes  the  type-set- 
ting machine  used  in  the  New  York  Tribune  office; 
the  linotype: — 

"  It  is  not,  strictly  speaking,  a  type-setting  machine, 
but  it  forms  type  bars,  each  of  the  length,  width,  and 
height  of  a  line  of  type,  and  the  exact  counterpart  of 
that  which  a  compositor  would  set  up,  except  that 
each  line  is  formed  of  one  entire  piece  of  metal,  in- 
stead of  as  many  different  pieces  as  there  are  charac- 
ters, spaces,  etc.  The  key-board  in  front  of  which 
the  operator  sits,  has  107  keys,  each  marked  for  its 
proper  characters. " 

Spacing  and  justification  are  perfect  and  automatic, 
and  uneven  spacing  is  a  physical  impossibility.  Each 
machine  displaces  two  men  on  type-setting  and  saves 
distribution  of  type.  Thirty  machines  and  thirty  men 
in  the  Tribune  office  do  the  work  that  formerly  re- 
quired ninety  men. 

Of  the  Mergenthaler  machine,  the  Philadelphia 
Times  says: — 

"It  is  possible  for  the  operator  to  make  corrections 
while  forming  the  line,  for  each  matrix  has  stamped  on 
the  side  facing  the  operator,  the  character  which  it 
represents,  so  that  he  has  constantly  in  view  the  mat- 
rices set  up,  and  if  he  finds  a  mistake  he  can  easily 
rectify  it  before  casting  the  line.  As  to  the  speed  of 


124          THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

door  of  want.  The  outlet  from  the  tyranny 
of  pauperism  in  the  handicrafts  is  to  rise 

the  machine,  a  moderately  skillful  operator  can  set  by 
it  from  3,500  to  4,000  ems  per  hour,  and  it  is  claimed 
that  exceptionally  expert  operators  have  set  up  lines 
consisting  of  thirty  ems  each  at  the  rate  of  ten  seconds 
per  line,  which  would  give  10, 800  ems  per  hour.  But 
it  is  not  claimed  that  such  rate  of  speed  can  be  regu- 
larly and  systematically  sustained.  Advocates  of  the 
Mergenthaler  machine  claim  that  it  effects  a  saving  of 
from  seven  to  nine-tenths  the  cost  of  composition. 
This  claim  may  be  enthusiastic,  but  certainly  the  sav- 
ing is  very  great." 

A  late  Government  report  on  mechanical  education 
concludes  as  follows: — 

"The  relative  indifference  of  high  day  wages  when 
brought  side  by  side  with  such  astonishing  results,  is 
more  apparent  yet  when  we  deal  with  industries  where 
automatic  machinery  is  employed  almost  exclusively. 
Screw-making,  nail-making,  pin-making,  etc.  In  the 
latter  industry  the  coil  of  brass  wire  is  put  in  its 
proper  place,  the  end  fastened,  and  the  almost  human 
piece  of  mechanism,  with  its  iron  fingers,  does  the  rest 
of  the  work.  One  machine  makes  180  pins  a  minute, 
cutting  the  wire,  flattening  the  heads,  sharpening  the 
points,  and  dropping  the  pin  in  its  proper  place. 
108,000  pins  a  day  is  the  output  of  one  machine.  A  fac- 
tory visited  by  me  employed  70  machines.  These  had  a 
combined  output  per  day  of  7,500,000  pins,  or,  300 
pins  to  a  paper — 25,000  papers  of  pins,  allowing  for 


THE   FUTURE   OP   LABOR.  125 

above  the  plane  of  a  machine,  to  do  some 
skilled  labor  that  machines  cannot  do. 

The  17,000,000  of  people  who  consti- 
tute the  business  population  of  the  United 
States  are  enabled,by  superior  combina- 
tion and  machinery,  to  excuse  a  large 
part  of  the  population  from  arts  of  pro- 
duction. The  chief  end  of  man,  in  other 
words,  is  not  to  make  or  obtain  food 
and  raiment.  In  the  old  times  the  total 
business  population  could  not  produce 
more  material  wealth  than  necessary  for 
the  consumption  of  those  dependent  upon 
it,  but  to-day  we  need  fewer  hunters  and 
fishermen,  and  more  men  and  women  to 
provide  amusement  and  recreation,  in- 


stoppages  and  necessary  time  for  repairs — say  20,000 
papers.  These  machines  are  tended  by  three  men. 
A  machinist  with  a  boy  helper  attends  to  the  repair- 
ing. It  will  not  materially  influence  the  price  of  pins 
whether  the  combined  earnings  of  these  five  men  be 
$7.50  or  $10  per  diem.  The  difference  would  amount 
to  one-eighth  of  a  cent  on  a  paper  of  pins.  The  like- 
lihood is  that  when  cheaper  help  is  employed  a  greater 
number  of  hands  would  be  employed  for  the  same 
work  and  the  same  output. " 


126          THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

tellectual  and  moral  education,  and  the 
thousand  forms  of  spiritual  wealth  upon 
which  the  civilized  man  feeds.* 

The  future  race  will  want  more  artists, 
scientists,  and  teachers.  All  the  nooks 
and  corners  of  nature  of  which  it  is  possi- 
ble for  man  to  gain  definite  knowledge 
will  be  explored.  In  the  wide  to-morrow 
of  civilization  the  masses  will  have  leisure, 
greater  exemption  from  manual  pursuits, 
and  a  chance  to  earn  bread  and  butter  by 


*  W.  T.  Harris  forcibly  says: — 

"  The  history  of  industry  goes  back  to  a  time  when 
only  one  in  a  thousand  of  the  able-bodied  population 
could  be  spared  for  the  creation  of  ornament  or  the 
ministry  of  culture.  Great  progress  had  been  reached 
when  one  in  a  hundred  could  be  spared  for  such  pur- 
poses. The  United  States  and  Great  Britain  have 
reached  the  point  where  five  in  a  hundred  of  the  la- 
borers are  actually  pursuing  vocations  that  have  for  • 
their  object  the  addition  of  ornament  to  what  is  al- 
ready useful,  or  the  direct  ministration  to  culture  in 
some  form.  When  the  ratio  is  reversed  and  only  five 
in  a  hundred  are  needed  to  provide  the  crude  neces- 
sary articles  of  consumption,  and  the  remnant  of  so- 
ciety may  devote  itself  to  the  higher  order  of  occupa- 
tions— then  the  economic  problem  will  be  solved." 


THE  FUTURE  OF  LABOR.      127 

giving  to  society  the  service  of  their  bet- 
ter faculties,  by  contributing  to  the  spirit- 
ual wealth  of  the  world.  This  does  not 
mean  that  idleness  is  to  reign.  Habits  of 
industry  will  always  be  necessary  to  give 
the  body  perfect  health  and  the  mind 
its  highest  training.  The  tendency  of  so- 
cial development  is  from  narrow  to  gen- 
eral education.  The  laborer  of  to-day 
must  have  a  more  varied  equipment  than 
his  forefathers  had,  a  better  education,  a 
wider  range.  Fewer  men  will  be  needed 
from  year  to  year  in  those  pursuits  whose 
sole  object  is  the  production  of  the  nec- 
essaries of  life, 'while  more  and  more  will 
be  needed  who  can  offer  to  the  race  sagac- 
ity, intelligent  endeavor,  and  the  fruits  of 
culture.  Society  will  have  imposed  upon 
it  the  duty  of  caring  for  the  poor  who  toil 
in  poverty  and  want,  and  whose  capacities 
are  too  feeble  to  get  on  in  the  world.  The 
energies  of  the  lower  order  of  workers  will 
need  to  be  directed  by  superintendents 
who  stand  at  the  head  of  the  army  of 
charity,  perhaps  under  state  direction. 


128  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

The  emancipation  of  man  from  those 
pursuits  that  minister  to  the  wants  of  food, 
clothing,  and  shelter,  and  his  growth  into 
those  higher  vocations  which  furnish  in- 
tellectual wealth  is  a  brighter  picture  than 
that  millennium  predicted  by  Henry 
George  when  "  water  and  heat  are  to  be 
carried  through  the  streets  at  public  ex- 
pense." The  participation  by  the  masses 
in  higher  vocations  will  cause  a  feeling  of 
well-being  and  happiness  never  to  be  at- 
tained when  they  toil  like  work-animals 
in  the  tread-mill  round  of  lower  forms  of 
industry.  As  Emerson  puts  it:  " These 
arts  open  great  gates  of  a  future,  promising 
to  make  the  world  plastic  and  to  lift  hu^ 
man  life  out  of  its  beggary  to  a  godlike 
ease  and  power." 

And  so  the  world  goes  on.  One  inven- 
tion calls  forth  another  and  another,  and 
there  is  no  end  to  the  explorations  yet  to 
be  made  during  this  three-score  and  ten 
years' journey  of  the  five  senses,  called 
the  life  of  mail.  The  printing  press  pho- 
tographing the  world  at  the  rate  of  30,000 


THE  FUTURE  OF  LABOR.      129 

copies  each  hour,  brings  the  lessons  of  the 
race  to  our  breakfast  tables  each  morning, 
and  Mr.  Edison's  phonograph  preserves 
the  human  voice  and  the  characteristics 
of  speech  so  that  time  and  distance  are 
annihilated.  Then  who  shall  set  a  limit 
to  the  realm  of  human  vocations  or  draw 
a  line  beyond  which  mankind  cannot  go  ? 
Slumbering  creation  is  expectant,  await- 
ing to  be  aroused  by  combinations  of  in- 
tellect, when  it  will  give  up  the  keys  to 
new  empires  of  endeavor,  and  then  ed- 
ucated labor  will  solve  the  problems  of 
distressed  labor  and  Shylock  will  be  seen 
no  more. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

INDUSTRIAL  PEACE  AND  CO-OPERA- 
TIVE PROFIT-SHARING. 

GROWTH  or  UNIONS  OB  GUILDS — LAWS  FOB  THE 
BENEFIT  OF  LABOBEBS — EVILS  OF  UNIONS  AND 
STRIKES — CO-OPERATION  BETWEEN  EMPLOYER  AND 
EMPLOYE  AS  A  PREVENTIVE  OF  STBIKES — FUTUBE 
WAGE  WOBKEBS. 

A  little  more  than  a  century  ago  the 
laborers  of  England  were  employed  under 
a  species  of  slavery.  Their  wages  were 
determined  by  their  employers,  and  any 
attempt  to  combine  for  the  purpose  of  de- 
manding increased  pay  was  punished  by 
confinement  in  the  pillory,  fines,  and  the 
loss  of  ears.  When  this  slavery  passed 
away  workmen  began  to  combine  in 
guilds,  or  unions,  for  the  purpose  of  main- 
taining better  wages.  The  absolute  \yill 
of  employers  was  no  longer  the  supreme 
law,  for  it  was  the  mission  of  the  guilds  to 
establish  a  more  equitable  basis  of  wages 

(130) 


INDUSTRIAL   PROFIT-SHARING.        131 

than  they  had  before  known.  In  time 
trades-unions  spread  to  America,  and  after 
a  long  series  of  years  employer  and  em- 
ploye alike  have  become  accustomed  to 
the  simple  wage  system  and  its  labor 
unions.  Both  manufacturer  and  work- 
men for  a  time  liked  the  certainty  of  dis- 
bursements and  receipts,  the  one  knowing 
just  what  he  would  have  to  expend,  the 
other  just  what  he  might  hope  to  receive. 
So  long  as  wages  were  established  without 
undue  clashing,  unhindered  by  strikes, 
quarrels,  riots  and  lock-outs;  so  long  as 
employers  conceded  fair  pay  and  fair 
hours,  and  before  they  combined  to  cut 
wages  to  the  minimum  of  bare  subsistence, 
the  system  had  some  features  that  en- 
deared it  to  the  people.  Can  the  system 
now  be  said  to  be  satisfactory?  It  would 
seem  not,  for  antagonisms  have  steadily 
grown,  gaining  in  bitterness  with  every 
conflict,  until  each  party  suspects  every 
movement  of  the  other  and  attributes  an 
evil  motive  to  every  action.  The  constant 
strikes  for  better  pay,  the  "  shut  downs " 


132  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

that  come  from  various  causes,  the  ar- 
bitrary demands  of  both  parties,  and  a 
thousand  other  incidents  of  the  warfare, 
have  destroyed  the  certainty  of  gains  that 
formerly  characterized  the  wage  system. 
The  search  for  a  broader  plan  has  resulted 
in  the  co-operative  system  of  profit-shar- 
ing. This  system  was  propounded  by 
bro^d-minded  men  who  would  improve 
the  pure  wage  plan,  which  is  conducted 
with  self-interest  as  the  only  motive,  and 
competition  as  the  sole  regulative  princi- 
ple of  enterprise. 

Notwithstanding  the  evidence  of  posi- 
tive experiments  there  are  many  employ- 
ers who  offer  objections  to  co-operative 
profit-sharing.  They  have  always  as- 
sumed that  they  take  all  the  risks  and 
that  they  should  have  all  the  profits;  that 
the  workmen  should  in  no  manner  be- 
come identified  with  the  business,  save  as 
subordinates,  governed  by  superiors;  that 
any  other  system  than  the  pure  wage  plan 
would  give  the  workmen  more  or  less  ad- 
ministrative control.  It  is  true  that  such 


INDUSTRIAL    PROFIT-SHARING.        133 

a  scheme  gives  the  workmen  more  rights, 
but  it  gives  them  no  voice  in  the  business 
management.  The  complaint  that  work- 
men would  have  too  much  power  is  based 
on  the  assumption  that  the  business  is 
entirely  the  affair  of  the  employer,  and 
tli at  it  is  beyond  his  province  to  promote 
the  welfare  of  his  men.  Resolved  into  its 
proper  elements,  the  principle  is  more 
clearly  embraced  in  the  maxim,  "  Every 
fellow  for  himself  and  the  devil  take  the 
hindmost,"  a  complete  negation  of  the 
Golden  Rule,  which,  while  it  plays  no 
part  in  economics,  cannot  be  forgotten  in 
social  science.  The  truth  is  that  workmen 
are  entitled  to  much  consideration  in  the 
business;  they  are  factors  that  cannot  be 
ignored  without  permanent  injury  to  the 
enterprises  with  which  they  are  connected. 
It  is  not  contended  that  workmen  should 
have  any  power  in  the  administration  of 
the  business,  further  than  as  regards  de- 
termining, in  conjunction  with  employers, 
their  equitable  share  of  the  profits,  and 
perhaps  some  voice  as  to  duties  and  privi- 


134          THE   STRUGGLE   FOR    BREAD. 

leges.  Under  a  carefully  drawn  agreement, 
based  on  the  just  rule  that  benefits  received 
should  be  proportioned  to  efforts  expended, 
there  would  be  less  uncertainty  of  gain, 
and  less  interference  by  either  with  the 
business  of  the  other,  than  under  the  pres- 
ent belligerent  and  very  unsatisfactory 
wage  system,  which  often  robs  human 
nature  of  its  better  qualities  and  widens 
the  chasm  between  those  whose  interests 
are  really  reciprocal.  The  evils  of  the 
present  plan  are  enumerated  by  Mr.  Ed- 
ward L.  Day,  a  prominent  Western  manu- 
facturer. He  shows  that  employers  are 
now  under  the  direction  of  unions  of  la- 
boring men,  and  pools  among  themselves, 
and  concludes  with  the  remarkable  state- 
ment that  "  the  sole  functions  of  employ- 
ers as  producers  are,  to  provide  material 
to  be  worked  up  under  rules  formulated 
by  the  workmen  and  money  to  pay  wages 
whose  rate  is  not  at  all  of  their  making." 
Under  any  view  of  the  wage  system  it  re- 
sults in  more  or  less  clashing  of  interests, 
for  with  depressions,  under-consumption 


INDUSTRIAL    PROFIT-SHARING.        135 

of  products,  and  fluctuations   of  markets, 
there  are  fruitful  chances  for  disputes. 

An  objection  to  the  profit-sharing  plan, 
so  senseless  as  hardly  to  deserve  notice, 
and  which  obtains  chiefly  in  the  minds  of 
persons  who  are  prone  to  view  the  dark 
side,  is  that  if  workmen  should  get  better 
earnings  they  would  squander  them  for 
liquor  and  other  uses  of  the  flesh.  In 
the  first  place  the  question  of  what  use 
men  will  make  of  money  that  is  justly 
theirs  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  equities 
of  the  case,  but  were  it  a  relevant  objec- 
tion statistics  show  that  drunkenness  and 
immorality,  also  the  death  rate,  univer- 
sally increase  with  the  decrease  of  wages ; 
while  good  pay,  as  a  rule,  induces  pros- 
perity, better  houses,  better  education, 
and  a  higher  plane  of  morals.  Besides,  it 
is  well  known  that  wealth  is  the  prereq- 
uisite of  leisure,  and  leisure  is  a  condition 
precedent  to  culture.  No  economist  has 
ever  advanced  the  diabolical  theory  that 
men  mu3t  be  starved  before  they  will  be- 
come good  citizens;  on  the  contrary,  it 


136  THE   STRUGGLE    FOR    BREAD. 

has  always  been  held  that  a  full  stomach 
must  precede  high  moral  teachings.  It 
is  of  little  use  to  discuss  moral  problems 
and  reforms  with  men  who  do  not  know 
where  their  next  meal  is  to  come  from. 
Philosophy  and  experience  both  confirm 
the  statement  that  high  wages,  on  the 
average,  ameliorate  the  condition  of  those 
who  toil.  Assume  the  reverse  for  a  mo- 
ment. If  a  man's  wickedness  increases 
with  enlarged  earnings,  if  he  beeomes  vi- 
cious, profligate  and  generally  worthless 
as  his  receipts  for  efforts  expended  become 
greater,  then  what  term  of  condemnation 
will  properly  characterize  those  who  an- 
nually make  millions?  In  the  light  of 
such  an  economy  the  greatest  philosopher 
is  the  man  who  can  discover  the  lowest 
possible  compensation  on  which  the  wage 
worker  can  subsist. 

But  the  chief  principle  in  the  system  of 
co-operative  profit-sharing  between  em- 
ployer and  employe  is  that  private  prop- 
erty and  private  enterprise  must  continue, 
but  with  more  good  will  and  less  greed. 


INDUSTRIAL    PROFIT-SHARING.        137 

This  distinction  should  be  borne  in  mind, 
for  it  is  the  pivotal  point  which  distin- 
guishes the  laborer's  demand  from  that  of 
socialists.  The  socialists,  even  the  mild- 
est, who  may  condemn  anarchy,  claim 
that  the  end  to  be  reached  is  "  the  cessa- 
tion of  private  property  in  the  means  of 
production,  which  will  then  be  held  by 
the  community  for  the  benefit  of  the  com- 
munity.'7 Such  is  the  teaching  of  mild 
leaders — Dr.  Edward  Aveling  and  Karl 
Marx. 

*  A  wise  economy  says  that,  while  labor 
is  not  entitled  to  all  the  profits  of  indus- 
try, it  is  justly  entitled  to  its  equitable 
percentage  of  the  growing  wealth  of  the 
country.  In  some  manner — better  by 
peace  than  by  war — this  manifestly  mer- 
itorious claim  must  eventually  be  recog- 
nized. The  laborer  must  have  the  market 
price  of  labor  under  competition,  and  be- 
yond this — more  than  the  interest  of  a  serv- 
ant— a  percentage  of  profit  on  the  invest- 
ment, so  that  his  interest  and  that  of  his 
employer  may  be  made  reciprocal.  Such 


138          THE   STRUGGLE    FOR    BREAD. 

a  system  is  co-operative  profit-sharing  be- 
tween employer  and  employe,  and  it  re- 
dounds to  the  advantage  of  both.  Under 
its  workings  there  can  be  no  strikes, 
riots,  lock-outs,  boycotts,  or  other  indus- 
trial warfare,  for  labor  will  be  in  partial 
partnership  with  capital,  and  a  wrong  to 
one  will  react  on  the  other. .  The  pure 
wage  system,  as  at  present  Conducted  in 
many  crowded  mining  and  factory  dis- 
tricts of  this  country,  is  conducted  on  the 
principle  that  the  stronger  shall  win.  Its 
tendency  is  toward  the  final  subjugation 
of  the  wage  worker,  a  condition  such  as 
was  experienced  in  Europe  a  few  centu- 
ries ago,  when  laborers  were  the  slaves  of 
their  employers. 

[What  is  said  of  co-operation  applies 
largely  to  extensive  manufactures  and 
not  to  small  concerns.] 

So  long  as  competition  between  em- 
ployer and  employe  is  the  "sole  regula- 
tive principle,  and  self-interest  the  sole 
motive  of  enterprise/'  there  can  be  no 
lasting  peace,  for  such  a  principle  ignores 


INDUSTRIAL    PROFIT-SHARING.         139 

the  fact  that  in  well-adjusted  relations  be- 
nevolence must  counterbalance  self-inter- 
est. The  question  as  between  employer 
and  employe  is  how  to  place  the  business 
on  a  basis  of  good-will  and  justice.  Co- 
operation of  some  kind  is  the  final  solu- 
tion, because  the  only  plan  that  creates 
"mutual  interests  that  are  operative  under 
changing  conditions,  and  self-regulating 
in  action."  In  the  operation  of  manufac- 
tures the  cost  of  labor  should  be  reckoned 
as  a  factor  in  the  production  of  wealth, 
and  estimated  for  its  percentage  of  profit. 
The  scheme  of  profit-sharing  is  made 
lucid  by  Mr.  Edward  L.  Day,  a  leading 
western  manufacturer,  who  has  made  a 
careful  study  of  the  problem.  His  suc- 
cinct statement  is  submitted : — 

"The  elements  of  the  cost  of  articles  are 
interest  on  capital,  active  and  fixed,  taxes, 
insurance,  repairs,  allowance  for  deterio- 
ration and  renewals,  and  labor.  Assume 
as  a  basis  of  cost  the  usual  business  inter- 
est on  capital,  taxes,  insurance,  repairs,  a 
proper  allowance  for  deterioration  and  re- 
newals, a  proper  compensation  for  the 


140  *HE   STRUGGLE    FOR    BREAD. 

services  of  proprietors,  salaries,  wages  to 
unskilled  workmen,  and  the  current 
wages,  at  the  time  being,  of  skilled  work- 
men. Each  of  these  will  compose  a  defi- 
nite percentage  of  the  cost  not  difficult  to 
ascertain.  If  the  selling  price  of  articles 
produced  just  nets  this  cost,  there  is  no 
profit;  if  it  is  less,  there  is  loss,  under  the 
present  system  sustained  alone  by  the  em- 
ploy&r;  if  it  is  greater  thefe  is  profit,  now 
unshared  by  the  employe.  If  the  interest 
on  capital,  compensation  of  proprietors, 
salaries,  and  wages  were  increased  or  de- 
creased in  proportion  as  the  selling  price 
was  higher  or  lower  than  cost,  there  would 
be  practical  co-operation,  in  which  all 
would  share  the  profit  or  loss  in  propor- 
tion to  their  respective  contributions  to 
cost." 

By  consulting  specimen  articles  of  agree- 
ment which  have  been  adopted  by  manu- 
facturing concerns,  it  is  found  that  a  fund 
is  set  aside  from  the  net  profits  as  a  re- 
serve or  guarantee  fund,  to  which  shall  be 
charged  all  losses  during  the  year.  The 
surplus  gained  in  a  successful  business 
would  be  an  incentive  to  hard  labor  and 
prudence  in  the  use  of  tools  and  materials. 


INDUSTRIAL   PROFIT-SHARING.        141 

In  an  unsuccessful  year,  the  percentage 
of  loss  would  be  counterbalanced  by  the 
surplus  saved  in  years  of  profit,  and  em- 
ployer and  employe  would  together  run 
the  legitimate  ribks  of  business  prosperity 
or  adversity,  their  fortunes  that  far  being 
cast  together.  Mr.  Day  says  that  there  is 
great  economy  in  the  use  of  tools  and  ma- 
terials, and  that  much  is  gained  by  abol- 
ishing watchmen  and  overseers,  saying 
nothing  of  the  immense  gain  by  reason  of 
the  immunity  from  labor  troubles.  MX. 
Carroll  D.  Wright  says  that  under  co-oper- 
ative profit-sharing  "labor  has  received  a 
more  liberal  share  for  its  skill,  capital  has 
been  better  remunerated,  and  the  moral 
tone  of  the  whole  community  involved 
raised.  Employment  has  been  steadier 
and  more  certain.  The  interest  of  all  has 
been  given  for  the  general  welfare.  Each 
man  feels  himself  more  a  man.  The  em- 
ployer looks  upon  his  employes  in  the  true 
light,  as  associates.  Conflict  ceases,  and 
harmony  takes  the  place  of  disturbances." 
The  profit-sharing  plan  is  working  with 


142          THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

eminent  success  in  some  American  estab- 
lishments, and  it  has  proved  to  be  very 
satisfactory  in  several  well-known  Euro- 
pean establishments,  where  the  results 
have  uniformly  been  successful.  Instances 
of  note  are  the  experiment  by  Leclaire,  a 
leading  house  painter ;  the  Paris  and  Or- 
leans Railway  Company;  the  industrial 
•partnership  established  by  M.  Godin,  at 
Guise,  France ;  the  experiments  of  Messrs. 
Briggs  Brothers,  at  Yorkshire,  England, 
and  many  other  companies.  Simple  co- 
operation in  production,  which  seeks  to 
discard  the  wage  system  and  employers, 
though  burdened  with  innumerable  dis- 
advantages incident  to  limited  capital, 
and  inability  of  the  workmen  to  wait  till 
an  indefinite  future  for  their  reward,  has 
met  with  some  degree  of  success  in  Eng- 
land, though  it  embraces  none  of  the  great 
advantages  of  profit-sharing  proper.  In 
1882  the  English  Co-operative  Congress  at 
Derby  Reported  a  profit  of  26  per  cent,  on  an 
investment  of  $10,500,000,  covering  1,346 
societies.  The  figures  are  certainly  worthy 


INDUSTRIAL    PROFIT-SHARING.        143 

of  attention.  As  to  the  outlook  for  the 
grander  system  of  profit-sharing,  which 
promises  to  be  the  solution  of  the  direct 
question  between  employer  and  employe, 
nothing  could  be  more  encouraging  than 
the  calm  conclusions  expressed  by  Mr. 
Wright  in  his  report  of  1886.  He  says: 
"  This  system,  simple  in  itself,  humane  in 
all  its  bearings,  just  in  every  respect  to  all 
the  parties  concerned,  is  the  combination 
of  all  that  is  good  in  co-operation.  This, 
the  wage  system  and  all  that  is  good  in 
compound  system,  is  becoming  a  necessity. 
Under  it  the  workman  receives  something 
more  than  has  been  accorded  to  him  on 
account  of  the  improvements  in  machin- 
ery ;  he  becomes  a  part  of  the  individual- 
ity of  the  establishment;  he  is  lifted  to  a 
higher  scale;  his  intelligence,  his  moral 
character,  have  weight  in  the  establish- 
ment in  proportion  tq  his  interest  in  it, 
and  the  whole  concern  has  a  better  chance 
for  prosperity,  for  weathering  depressions, 
and  for  general  happiness,  than  under 
the  present  wage  system  alone,"  Again 


144          THE   STRUGGLE   POK    BREAD. 

he  says:  "It  is  a  pleasure  to  be  able  to 
state  that  the  proprietors  of  many  influen- 
tial manufacturing  establishments  in  this 
country  are  contemplating  the  organiza- 
tion of  their  establishment  upon  this  basis. 
They  see  the  success  of  the  enterprises 
where  this  system  has  been  adopted,  and 
are  glad  to  follow  in  so  just  a  path." 

A  system  so  practical,  so  highly  en- 
dorsed and  so  just  throughout,  is  worthy 
of  more  attention  on  the  part  of  laborers 
and  employers  than  it  has  heretofore  re- 
ceived. It  is  highly  encouraging  to  see 
that  it  is  yearly  becoming  more  popular, 
and  that  many  thinkers  have  acknowl- 
edged that  it  will,  in  some  form,  be  the 
final  solution  of  the  problem  of  peace  in 
factories  and  mines. 


*NOTE. — George  M.  Powell  of  Philadelphia  contrib- 
utes to  the  November  (1887)  Journal  of  Social  Science 
the  following  interesting  information: — 

"An  interesting  American  example  of  profit-sharing 
is  that  at  Peacedale,  near  Providence,  R,  I.  An  im- 
portant item  in  its  success  is  that  the  proprietors  have 
their  own  unpretentious  homes  among  their  people, 
instead  of  living  in  lordly  style  in  some  distant  city. 


INDUSTRIAL   PROFIT-SHARING.        145 
PART  II — UNIONS  AGAIN. 

The  army  of  labor,  in  seeking  to  win 
victories,  often  pursues  war  methods.     It 

They  have  also  urged  and  aided  the  members  of  their 
industrial  family  to  secure  homes.  A  free  library 
has  been  given  them  by  the  proprietors,  the  Messrs. 
Hazard.  The  general  principle  of  division  there  seems 
to  be  to  give  labor  and  capital  each  half  of  the  profits ; 
profits  being  what  is  left  after  paying  wages  and  cur- 
rent expenses  and  modest  interest  on  a  capital  of  $250,- 
000.  Four  hundred  and  fi  ty  persons  are  employed, 
and  for  more  than  a  generation  this  has  been  known 
as  a  successful  industrial  Christiaa  .community.  The 
proprietors  belong  to  the  Society  of  Friends.  They 
own  all  the  stock,  and  they  aim  at  success  by  saving 
of  wastes  more  than  by  buying  cheap  and  selling  dear. 
They  treat  the  bonus  they  pay  their  people  as  honest 
dues  for  care  and  faithful  service,  not  as  a  gratuity. 
Those  acquainted  with  this  industrial  family  are  sat- 
isfied that  its  financial  gain,  while  respectable  in 
amount,  has  not  been  so  great  through  participation 
as  the  moral  effect.  The  care  and  painstaking  of  labor, 
and  the  fraternal  and  patarnal  interest  of  proprietors 
and  people  in  each  other,  have  developed  character, 
conscience,  personal  thrift,  and  intelligence,  of  far 
greater  value  than  money. 

"Profit-sharing  in   the  Pillsbury  Flouring  Mills  at 
Minneapolis,  Minn.,   is  worth  study.     They  have   an 
annual  output  of  $10,000,000  worth   of  flour;    also 
10 


146          THE   STRUGGLE   FOR    BREAD. 

is  not  organized  in  the  defensive  alone,  for 
many  of  its  methods  are  aggressive  as  well. 
Organization  seeking  to  force  concessions 
means  conflict,  a  long  struggle  for  the  re- 
dress of  actual  and  alleged  wrongs,  the 
enlargement  of  rights  and  the  limitation 
of  duties.  Incensed  by  long  abuses,  labor 
is  often  cruel  in  its  warfare,  and  sometimes 
tyrannical  and  singularly  blind  in  its  de- 
mands. While  its  methods  are  often  jus- 
tifiable, they  are  at  best,  necessary  evils 
incident  to  the  conflict  in  progress.  The 


$8,000,000  more  of  grain  elevator  operations.  Two 
and  a  half  millions  are  required  for  running  expenses 
and  interest  on  capital.  Average  men  who  have  been 
in  their  employ  live  years  receive  participatory  bo- 
nuses amounting  to  50  per  cent,  in  one  year,  in  addition 
to  full  average  wages  of  that  region.  Those  occupying 
places  of  special  care  and  responsibility  have  received 
bonus  additions  to  such  wages  of  65  per  cent.  '  Yet 
the  company,'  says  Mr.  Carroll  D.  Wright,  'con- 
sider that  their  plan  of  profit-sharing  has  greatly  in- 
creased their  own  profits  by  the  voluntary  service  of 
their  men  in  times  of  need.  By  their  interest  in  the 
business  and  in  other  ways,  the  evident  good- will  of 
their  employes  is  regarded  as  the  most  important  and 
agreeable  result.'" 


INDUSTRIAL    PROFIT-SHARING.        147 

unions  of  laboring  men  often  do  much  in 
the  way  of  promoting  industrial  education 
and  keeping  alive  the  feeling  of  brotherly 
love.  Besides  this,  many  such  organiza- 
tions deprecate  strikes  and  open  warfare; 
yet  a  union  in  itself  is  not  a  guarantee  that 
its  members  shall  escape  from  the  errors  of 
human  judgment,  and  from  the  disaster 
entailed  by  open  warfare.  As  a  result  of 
bitter  strifes  with  non-union  workmen,  the 
spirit  of  war  has  often  been  engendered  to 
such  an  extent,  among  union  artisans, 
that  they  have  been  relentless  in  their  op- 
position to  those  who  have  patronized  their 
enemies, — but  such  battles  have  been  le- 
gitimate, if  war  is  legitimate.  Trades- 
unions  regulate  the  price  of  labor  so  that 
individual  workmen  are  unable  to  com- 
pete for  places,  all  rates  being  subject  to 
union  scale-list.  By  any  scale-rates  there 
is  a  virtual  corner  on  wages,  and  this 
monopoly  of  wages  is  as  unyielding  as 
the  iron  necessity  that  compels  work- 
men, in  some  cities,  to  accept  the  rates 
.  dictated  by  pools  of  employers.  At  best 


148          THE   STRUGGLE   FOR    BREAD. 

the  union  dictates,  and  since  it  is  com- 
posed of  fallible  beings,  its  dictation  may 
often  be  absurdly  unjust.  The  employer 
is  frequently  delayed  by  useless  restric- 
tions and  unwarranted  interferences  in  his 
business;  when  there  is  a  clashing  of 
interests,  the  combatants  measure  arms, 
and  the  employer  is  threatened  with  war; 
should  he  grow  weary  of  the  union  and 
hire  non-union  men,  they  are  frequently 
locked  out,  or  perhaps  hindered  by  force 
from  going  to  work;  should  the  employer 
desire  to  rid  his  business  of  an  incompe- 
tent man,  he  is,  if  that  man  chances  to  be 
a  Knight  of  Labor,  sometimes  defied  and 
despised  by  all  the  unions  and  Knights  of 
Labor  assemblies  in  the  district,  and  should 
he  refuse  to  submit  to  the  arrangements 
made  by  delegated  committees,  his  goods 
are  often  boycotted  and  publicly  con- 
demned. These  are  some  of  the  extremes 
into  which  labor  has  frequently  blundered. 
In  time  the  workmen  thus  begin  to  re- 
gard those  who  hire  them  as  their  worst 
enemies,  and  the  chasm  between  the  two 


INDUSTRIAL    PROFIT-SHARING.         149 

classes  is  made  wider,  until  both  parties  • 
become  bitter  and  uncompromising,  for- 
getting, apparently,  that  an  injury  to  one 
is,  in  the  end,  an  injury  to  the  other,  and 
to  society  at  large.  Thus,  notwithstanding 
the  many  .advantages  of  unions,  they  are 
not  free  from  patent  evils. 

As  a  correlative  of  trades-unions,  capi- 
talists and  employers  combine  to  modify 
the  wages  paid  to  workmen.  Finally  they 
become  aggressive,  dictating  and  enforc- 
ing such  wage-lists  as  they  deem  proper. 
They  claim  the  absolute  right  to  name  the 
wages,  gauge  the  working  hours,  and  se- 
lect the  persons  who  shall  do  their  work. 
They  seek  to  prohibit  unions  of  working- 
men,  and  they  peremptorily  discharge  ag- 
itators. Organized  in  this  manner,  having 
felt  the  evils  of  union  mandates,  and  still 
retaining  feelings  of  hatred  for  those  who 
may  have  injured  them,  they  often  accu- 
mulate vast  fortunes,  and  yet,  during  the 
most  prosperous  eras,  deny  to  their  work- 
men even  the  smallest  advance  in  wages. 
In  a  state  of  peace,  with  a  flourishing  busi- 


150          THE    STRUGGLE    FOR    BREAD. 

ness  and  good-will  between  employer  and 
employe,  the  proceedings  of  both  parties 
would  be  dictatorial.  But  this  is  not  an 
era  of  industrial  harmony,  and  the  meth- 
ods of  peace  cannot  be  expected  to  pre- 
vail. Undeniably  there  is  war,  and  there 
is  a  steadily  growing  feeling  of  discontent 
with  present  conditions.  The  daily  pa- 
pers contain  accounts  of  frequent  conflicts, 
where  police  and  military  forces  are  al- 
most powerless  to  prevent  great  disaster  to 
life  and  property,  while  a  few  memorable 
strikes  have  been  the  great  news  items  of 
the  day.  There  is  hope  and  prophecy  in 
W.  D.  Ho  well's  reference  to  the  conflict,  in 
"Annie  Kilburn."  He  says: — 

"The  lines  are  drawn  harder  and  faster 
between  the  rich  and  the  poor,  and  on 
either  side  the  forces  are  embattled.  The 
workingmen  are  combined  in  vast  organ- 
izations to  withstand  the  strength  of  the 
capitalists,  and  these  are  taking  the  lesson 
and  uniting  in  trusts.  The  smaller  in- 
dustries are  gone,  and  the  smaller  com- 
merce is  being  devoured  by  the  larger. 


INDUSTRIAL   PROFIT-SHARING.        151 

.  Yet  in  the  labor  organizations,  which 
have  their  bad  side,  their  weak  side, 
through  which  the  forces  of  hell  enter,  I 
see  evidence  of  the  fact  that  the  poor  have 
at  last  had  pity  on  the  poor,  and  will  no 
more  betray  and  underbid  and  desert  one 
another,  but  will  stand  and  pull  together 
as  brothers;  and  the  monopolies  though 
they  are  founded  upon  ruin,  though  they 
know  no  pity  and  no  relenting,  have  a 
final  significance  which  we  must  not  lose 
sight  of.  They  prophesy  the  end  of  com- 
petition; they  eliminate  one  element  of 
strife,  of  rivalry,  of  warfare." 


APPENDIX. 


THE  following  pages  contain  valuable 
information  in  the  form  of  data,  tables,  and 
extracts  from  eminent  writers'  works: — 

THE   MODERN   SLAVERY. 

The  following  words  on  the  railway 
slavery  are  from  the  pen  of  Hon.  George 
W.  Julian,  in  the  March,  1883,  North 
American  Review. — 

"Slavery,  indeed,  has  been  abolished, 
at  least  so  far  as  legislation  could  take 
away  the  power  of  the  master ;  but  the 
freedmen  have  not  yet  been  emancipated 
from  the  thraldom  imposed  by  property 
and  intelligence  upon  the  helplessness  of 
poverty  and  ignorance.  The  spirit  of 
aristocracy  has  not  been  '  purged  out  of 
the  community '  in  either  section  of  the 
Union,  but  has  simply  taken  refuge  in 
other  forms,  and  is  still  putting  forth  the 
full  measure  of  its  evil  power.  While  the 
chattel  slavery  of  the  Southern  negro  is 

(153) 


154  THE   STRUGGLE    FOR    BREAD. 

at  an  end,  the  animating  principle  of  the 
old  slave-masters  still  finds  manifold  ex 
pression.  It  reveals  itself  in  industrial 
servitude,  which  borrows  its  life  from  the 
alliance  of  concentrated  capital  with  labor- 
saving  machinery.  Its  maxim  is,  that 
the  chief  end  of  government  is  the  pro- 
tection of  property,  which  is  easily  trans- 
lated into  the  kindred  maxim,  that  capital 
should  own  labor.  Its  tap-root  is  pure 
cupidity,  and,  if  left  to  itself,  it  degenerates 
into  a  system  of  organized  rapacity,  with 
conscience  and  humanity  turned  adrift. 
Commercial  feudalism  is  another  form  of 
aristocratic  rule.  It  wields  its  power 
through  the  machinery  of  great  corpora- 
tions, which  are  practically  endowed  with 
life  offices  and  the  right  of  hereditary 
succession.  They  control  the  makers  and 
expounders  of  our  laws,  and  are  steadily 
advancing  along  their  chosen  line  of 
march  toward  absolute  supremacy." 


APPENDIX. 


155 


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156  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

LANDMARKS  IN   THE  RAILWAY  FIGHT. 

The  following  are  .some  landmarks  in 
the  railway  movement: — 

I. — The  Legislative  Committee  that  in- 
vestigated the  management  of  the  Erie 
Railroad  in  1873,  concluded  its  report  as 
follows : — 

"  It  is  not  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the 
Erie  Railway  has  been  alone  in  the  corrupt 
use  of  money  for  the  purposes  named; 
but  the  sudden  revolution  in  the  direction 
of  this  company  has  laid  bare  a  chapter 
in  the  recent  history  of  railway  manage- 
ment such  as  has  not  been  permitted  here- 
tofore. It  exposes  the  reckless  and  prodi- 
gal use  of  money,  wrung  from  the  people 
to  purchase  the  election  of  the  people's 
representatives  and  to  bribe  them  when  in 
office.  According  to  Mr.  Gould,  his  opera- 
tions extended  into  four  different  states. 
It  was  the  custom  to  contribute  money  to 
influence  both  nominations  and  elections." 

II.— The  third  semi-annual  report  of  the 
Railway  Commissioners  of  Georgia,  dated 
May  1,  1881,  says:— 


APPENDIX.  157 

"  The  moral  and  social  consequences  of 
these  railway  corruptions  are  even  worse 
than  the  political ;  the}^  are  simply  appall- 
ing. We  contemplate  them  with  anxiety 
and  dismay.  The  demoralization  is  worse 
than  that  of  war,  because  fraud  is  meaner 
than  force,  and  trickery  meaner  than 
violence.  Aside  from  their  own  corrup- 
tions, the  operators  aim  directly  at  the 
corruption  of  the  press  and  the  govern- 
ment." 

III.— Speaking,  in  October,  1886,  of  the 
tyranny  of  Pennsylvania  railway  cor- 
porations, and  of  their  combinations  to 
run  up  the  price  of  coal,  Governor  Patti- 
son  said  :• — 

"  It  extorts  from  the  profits  of  shipment 
all  that  the  traffic  will  bear,  and  often  more 
than  it  will  bear,  doing  this  without  a 
reasonable  regard  to  the  cost  of  service  or 
the  right  of  shippers.  It  causes  violent 
fluctuations  in  prices,  making  all  trade 
dependent  upon  its  movements,  and  hold- 
ing a  perpetual  menace  over  the  material 
interests  of  the  country.  Against  such 
combinations  the  individual  is  helpless." 


158  THE   STRUGGLE    FOR    BREAD. 

IV. — Governor  Lee,  of  Virginia,  in  ad- 
dressing the  people,  said : — 

"  Combat  great  money  corporations  that 
seek  to  control  your  Legislatures,  federal 
and  state,  by  bribery  and  corruption. 
.  .  .  Draw  the  fangs  from  the  money 
kings.  .  .  .  Organize  against  capi- 
talists who  furnish  money  to  carry  elec- 
tions, and  then  claim  as  their  reward  the 
selection  of  the  rulers." 

V. — Hon.  M.  K.  Turner,  of  Nebraska, 
in  addressing  the  people,  said  :— 

"  With  no  straining  of  the  eyes  we  see 
men  who  run  for  office  in  this  state  in  the 
interest  and  at  the  bidding  of  railroads ; 
and  officials  elected  by  votes  of  the  peo- 
ple, who  come  and  go,  who  talk  and  vote 
at  the  dictation  of  the  political  attorneys 
of  the  railroad  companies." 

VI. — A  clear  writer  in  a  Western  daily 
says : — 

"Mr.  Croffut,  in  his  recent  sketch  of  the 
Vanderbilt  family,  a  sketch  written  for 
the  purpose  of  belauding  the  Commodore 


APPENDIX.  159 

and  his  progeny,  says  that  among  the 
principles  of  the  elder  Vanderbilt  were 
these :  To  water  stock  and  increase  divi- 
dends. He  relates  with  great  glee  how 
the  old  hero  and  his  friend,  Tobin,  put  up 
a  game  on  the  Legislature  and  made  sev- 
eral millions  out  of  a  conspiracy." 

VII.— The  Irish  World  says:- 

"It  is  well  known  that,  here  in  New 
York  and  in  other  states,  the  railways  act 
on  the  principle  of  extorting  from  the 
shippers  of  goods  the  uttermost  penny 
that  can  be  wrung  from  them.  It  is  not 
improbable  that  if  the  companies  con- 
tinue in  this  robbery,  public  opinion  will, 
in  the  end,  compel  the  states  to  take  the 
railroads  under  their  control." 

VIII. — An  unknown  correspondent  re- 
cently sent  me  the  following  estimate, 

which  is  worth  studying: — 

» 

"Live  hogs  before  fattening  are  shipped 
in  lots  of  100  to  130  head  per  car,  and  af- 
ter fattening,  in  lots  of  60  to  100  per  car, 
according  to  weight  and  condition. 

"If  a  car-load  of  130  hogs  were  shipped 
-across  the  continent,  they  would  not 


160  THE    STRUGGLE    FOR   BREAD. 

charge  more  than  $600  for  the  car,  which 
would  amount  to  about  $4.62  for  each 
hog.  The  companies  are  charging  from 
$150  to  $600  per  car  for  transcontinental 
freight.  It  costs  them  no  more  to  pull  a 
car-load  of  hogs  than  any  other  kind  of 
freight.  If  130  hogs  were  taken  for  $150, 
it  would  cost  for  each  hog  only  $1.16  for  a 
trip.  Now,  counting  the  cost  of  a  passen- 
ger coach  at  $5,000,  the  interest  at  six  per 
cent,  for  one  seat  for  one  day  would  amount 
to  one  and  one-third  cents;  at  a  cost  of 
$10,000,  the  interest  would  be  two  and 
two-thirds  cents ;  at  $20,000,  the  interest 
would  be  for  one  seat  one  day  five  and 
one-third  cents,  and  for  seven  days,  or  the 
trip  across  the  continent,  thirty-seven  and 
one-third  cents.  It  would  cost  as  much 
or  more  than  that  to  handle  each  hog. 
The  hog  is  only  charged  $1.16  for  cross- 
ing this  great  American  continent,  while 
the  passenger  is  charged  $151.50.  From 
this  it  would  seem  that  the  hog  is  a  fa- 
vored anfl  superior  being. 

"  How  long  are  the  passengers  going  to 
pay  130  times  the  price  of  a  hog's  passage, 
when  they  know  that  two  passengers  can 
be  hauled  for  what  it  costs  to  haul  and 
handle  one  hog." 


APPENDIX.  161 

IX. — The  railway  really  originated  in 
England,  where  it  has,  all  things  consid- 
ered, reached  the  most  formidable  propor- 
tions as  an  institution.  In  1845  the  Glad- 
stone Act  proposed  that  the  state  should 
purchase  the  roads,  but  that  idea  was 
abandoned,  and  the  question  in  England 
has  really  reached  a  state  of  quiescence, 
and  a  few  great  companies  control  the 
monopoly  of  the  railway  business.  The 
Belgian  Government  own  60  per  cent,  of 
the  railroads  there,  and  private  enterprise 
owns  and  controls  the  remaining  40  per 
cent.  The  one  is  a  wholesome  check  to 
the  other,  and  competition  has  fair  play. 
France  was  very  slow  in  the  development 
of  railways,  and  not  until  1837 — when 
English  and  American  trunk  lines  were 
really  planned  and  started — did  France 
take  any  movement  towards  organizing 
roads.  The  matter  is  undertaken  in 
France  by  private  companies,  which  are 
limited  to  districts,  in  which  each  com- 
pany is  supreme  and  free  from  competing 
lines,  but  the  government  arranges  tariffs, 

ii 


162         THE    STRUGGLE    FOR   BREAD. 

time-tables,  etc.  There  are  six  or  seven 
large  railway  districts.  In  Germany  the 
theory  of  bureaucracy  prevails.  The  Ger- 
mans approach  the  problem  in  a  cool  and 
scientific  manner.  Nearly  all  the  roads 
are  private  companies,  subsidized  by  the 
state,  or  else  the  state  is  a  heavy  share- 
holder in  the  roads.  At  any  rate  the  om- 
nipotent hand  of  government  in  Germany 
regulates  everything  about  the  roads,  from 
the  freight  and  passenger  rates,  down  to 
the  provision  for  safety.  It  is  said  that 
the  English-speaking  races  have  favored 
the  idea  of  private  control,  while  the  con- 
tinental nations,  whose  governments  are 
peculiarly  strong  in  the  executive  depart- 
ments, favor  the  state  control  idea.  Our 
English-speaking  nations  are  stronger  in 
the  parliamentary  or  legislative  branches, 
and  commissions  or  bureaucratic  control 
have  not  been  favored.  The  emancipa- 
tion of  the  track,  as  I  advocate,  combines 
the  best  points  of-  both  the  continental 
and  the  English  or  American  system. 
X. — The  reader  should  clearly  under- 


APPENDIX.  163 

stand  that  state  ownership  of  the  railway 
tracks  would  involve  the  employment  of 
comparatively  few  officers.  For  instance, 
the  total  number  of  men  engaged  in  rail- 
way service  (exclusive  of  clerks  and  book- 
keepers, agents,  etc.,  of  passenger  and 
freight  departments)  in  1880,  was  236,058, 
and  out  of  this  comparatively  small  num- 
ber many  must  be  excluded,  for,  as  there 
were  29,000  locomotives,  at  least  75,000 
of  this  236,058  must  have  been  engaged  as 
firemen  and  engineers.  Then  there  were 
many  thousand  employed  as  brakemeii 
and  conductors.  There  are  now  125,000 
miles  of  railway  in  the  United  States.  I 
estimate  that  the  track  furnishes  employ- 
ment to  less  than  one  man  per  mile,  so 
that  for  all  the  states  and  territories  the 
tracks  would,  after  all,  not  employ  any 
considerable  number  of  men.  The  reader 
can  readily  reason  the  problem  out  for 
himself  and  quickly  see  that  the  state 
ownership  of  the  roadbed  would  not  per- 
petuate corruption  in  power.  The  posi- 
tion of  section-hand  is  not  so  enticing. 


164          THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

Again,  state  ownership  does  not  mean 
that  all  men  will  go  into  the  railway  busi- 
ness. No  more  than  a  practical  number 
would  go  into  that  calling.  The  baker, 
the  printer,  would  not  desert  the  old  call- 
ing. 

ENORMOUS    EARNINGS. 

The  following  is  from  the  report  of  the 
Committee  of  Transportation  of  the  Amer- 
ican Economic  Association: — 

The  enormous  rate  at  which  railroad 
traffic  has  increased  may  be  seen  from  the 
following  table,  taken  from  Nimmo's  Re- 
port on  Internal  Commerce  of  the  United 
States,  for  1884:— 


APPENDIX. 


165 


Total  number  of  tons  (of  2,000  pounds)  transported 
upon  the  New  York  state  canals,  the  New  York  Cen- 
tral and  Hudson  River  Railroad,  the  New  York,  Lake 
Erie  and  Western  Railroad,  and  the  Pennsylvania 
Railroad,  each  year  from  1868  to  1883,  inclusive. 


YEAR. 

New  York 
State  canals* 

New  York 
Central  and 
Hudson  Riv- 
er Railroad.* 

New  York 
Lake  Erie 
and  Western 
Railroad.* 

Pennsylva- 
nia Railroad 
Division.! 

TONS. 

TONS. 

TONS. 

TONS. 

1868.. 

6,442,225 

1,846,599 

3,908,243 

4,722,015 

1869... 

5,859,080 

2,281,885 

4,312,209 

5,402,991 

1870... 

6,173,769 

4,122,000 

4,852,505 

5,804,051 

1871... 

6,467,888 

4,532,056 

4,844,208 

7,100,294 

1872... 

6,673,370 

4,393,965 

5,564,274 

8,459,535 

1873... 

6,364,782 

5,522,724 

6,312,702 

9,211,231 

1874... 

5,804,588 

6,114,678 

6,364,276 

8,626,946 

1875... 

4,859,858 

6,001,954 

6,239,946 

9,115,368 

1876... 

4,172,129 

6,803,680 

5,972,818 

9,922,911 

1877... 

4,955,963 

6,351,356 

6,182,451 

9,738,295 

1878... 

5,171,320 

7,695,413 

6,150,568 

10,946,752 

1879... 

5,362,372 

9,015,753 

8,212,641 

13,684,041 

1880... 

6,457,656 

10,533,038 

8,715,892 

15,364,788 

1881... 

5,179,192 

11,591,379 

11,086,823 

18,229,365 

1882... 

5,467,423 

11,330,393 

11,895,238 

20,360,399 

1883... 

5,664,056 

10,892,440 

13,610,623 

21,674,160 

*From  annual  report  of  Auditor  of  Canal  Department,  State 
of  New  York. 

fFrom  annual  reports  of  Pennsylvania  Railroad  Company. 

From  this  table  it  appears  that  the  ton- 
nage transported  on  the  New  York  Cen- 
tral and  Hudson  River  Railroad  increased 
from  1,846,599  tons  in  1868  to  10,892,440 


166  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

tons  in  1883;  that  the  tonnage  transported 
on  the  New  York,  Lake  Erie,  and  Western 
Railroad  increased  from  3,908,243  tons  In 
1868  to  13,610,623  tons  in  1883;  and  that 
the  tonnage  transported  on  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad  increased  from  4,722,015 
tons  in  1868  to.  21,674,160  tons  in  1883. 
The  total  tonnage  transported  by  rail  on 
these  three  roads  increased  from  10,476,- 
857  tons  in  1868  to  46,177,223  tons  in  1883. 
The  growing  importance  of  the  railway 
as  compared  with  the  canal  under  our 
present  system  is  very  evident  from  the 
above  table.  Much  of  this  traffic  was 
"  through  traffic,"  i.  e.,  traffic  which  went 
from  the  West  to  the  East,  while  a  much 
larger  proportion  of  it  was  interstate  traf- 
fic, i.  e.,  traffic  which  crossed  at  least  one 
state  line.  It  appears,  from  the  reports  of 
New  York  state  officials,  that  the  traffic  on 
the  Erie  canal  increased  from  4,729,654 
tons  in  1865  to  5,009,488  in  1884 ;  while 
the  traffic  on  the  railroads  competing  with 
it  ran  in  the  same  time  from  3,609,640  to 
22,123,895  tons. 


APPENDIX.  •      167 

THE  TRUST  EVIL. 

In  speaking  of  Trusts,  William  W.  Cook 
of  the  New  York  bar,  says: — 

The  American  people  have  become 
alarmed  at  the  growth  of  "Trusts."  The 
Standard  Oil  Trust  and  the  American 
Cotton  Oil  Trust  have  sown  their  seed  in 
a  fertile  soil,  and  the  rank  growth  is  to- 
day polluting  the  air  and  stifling  the  ex- 
istence of  healthy  life  and  progress.  It  is 
currently  reported  and  believed  that  the 
" Trust"  monopolies  have  drawn  within 
their  grasp  not  only  kerosene-oil  and  cot- 
ton-seed oil,  but  sugar,  oatmeal,  starch, 
white  corn-meal,  straw  paper,  pearled  bar- 
ley, coal,  straw  board,  castor-oil,  linseed- 
oil,  lard,  school  slate,  oilcloth,  salt,  cattle, 
gas,  street  railways,  whisky,  rubber,  steel, 
steel  rails,  steel  and  iron  beams,  nails, 
wrought-iron  pipes,  iron  nuts,  stoves,  lead, 
copper,  envelopes,  paper  bags,  paving 
pitch,  cordage,  coke,  reaping  and  binding 
and  mowing  machines,  threshing  ma- 
chines, ploughs,  glass,  and  water  works. 


168    •      THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

And  the  list  is  growing  day  by  day.  Mill- 
ions of  dollars  in  cash  or  property,  are  be- 
ing drawn  into  the  vortex.* 

The  fabulous  profits  which  flow  from  an 
absolute  " Trust"  have  dazzled  the  minds 
and  set  on  fire  the  imagination  of  men. 
Manufacturers  are  rushing  into  the  mael- 
strom. They  are  staking  their  fortunes 
on  the  venture,  and,  in  their  dreams  of 
the  future  they  see  a  rich  and  golden 
stream  of  wealth  rewarding  their  daring 
plans. 

They  reason  well  and  ably.  Cheaper 
production  is  to  result;  multitudes  of  of- 
ficers are  to  be  dispensed  with;  superin- 
tendents, traveling  salesmen,  and  expens- 
ive advertisements  are  to  be  diminished ; 
raw  material  is  to  be  purchased  more 
cheaply ;  the  highest  order  of  administra- 


*"The  anthracite  coal  combination  of  Pennsylvania, 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  monopolies  in  the  United 
States,  comprises  six  railways,  which  own  195,000 
acres  of  anthracite  coal  land  out  of  a  total  of  270,000 
acres." — Richard  T.  Ely,  in  Harper's  Magazine,  July, 
1886,  p.  255. 


APPENDIX.  169 

tive  ability  is  to  be  procured;  inventions 
are  to  be  encouraged  and  used;  overpro- 
duction is  to  be  prevented ;  permanency 
of  employment  is  to  be  ensured ;  more  cer- 
tain returns  on  capital  are  to  be  guaran- 
teed; insolvencies,  resulting  from  compe- 
tition, are  to  disappear;  production  on  a 
large  scale  is  to  decrease  the  cost  thereof; 
large  and  new  enterprises,  requiring  great 
capital,  great  risk,  and  great  powers  of 
administration  are  to  be  undertaken;  and 
finally,  they  argue  within  the  secrecy  of 
their  conclave  that  the  public  is  at  their 
mercy,  and  that  prices  may  be  advanced. 
Silently,  rapidly,  and  successfully  their 
schemes  are  being  consummated.  No 
shock  from  the  outer  world  has  disturbed 
the  progress  of  their  plans. 

EVOLUTION   OF   VOCATIONS. 

Dr.  W.  T.  Harris  furnishes  the  following 
table  of  industries,  showing  the  growth  of 
vocations.  His  "Right  of  Property  and 
Ownership  of  Land"  is  a  pamphlet  that 
every  student  should  possess. 


170  THE   STRUGGLE    FOR   BREAD. 

I.  The    Lower    Order — The  Production  of 
Necessities. 

1.  Procuring  raw  materials. 

(a)  Agriculture  and  grazing. 

(b)  Hunting,  fishing. 

(c)  Mining      (including      petroleum 
wells,  etc.). 

2.  Transportation, 
(a)  Teaming. 
(6)  Railroad. 

(c)  Water  transportation. 

3.  Transformation  of  Products. 

(a)  Textile  fabrics,  cloth  and  cloth- 
ing. 

(6)  Wood  and  metal  work. 
(c)  Leather. 
(dj  Miscellaneous. 

II.  1  he  Higher  Order — Production  of  Means 
of  Luxury,  of  Protection,  and  of  Culture. 
The  vocations  that  provide. 

1.  Means  of  luxury  and  creature-com- 
fort, including  manufactures  that  require 
a  higher  order  of  educated,  technical  skill. 

2.  Means  of  protection,  including 

(a)  Those   who   provide   amusement 
and  recreation. 

(b)  The  medical  profession. 

(c)  The  legal  profession. 


APPENDIX.  171 

(d)  Officials  managing  public  works 
or  public  charities,  also  government 
officials. 

(e)  Insurance  companies  and  the  di- 
rective agents  of  companies  formed 
for  guarding  the  interests,  general 
or  special,  of  society  as  a  whole  or  of 
any  particular  part  of  it — charitable 
associations,  trade  unions,  etc.,  etc. 

3.  Instrumentalities  of  Culture. 

(a)  Moral   and  religious  —  churches^, 
etc. 

(b)  Intellectual  and  moral  education 
— schools  and  libraries. 

(c)  Aesthetic — including     all    trades 
.that  produce  ornament  on   useful 
goods  or  that  produce  works  of  art 
in  sculpture,  painting,  music,  po- 
etry,   and   literary   art,   landscape 
gardening  etc.,  etc. — also  all  influ- 
ences that  cultivate  taste, — the  for- 
mation and  care   of  art  museums, 
etc. 

(d)  The   collection   and   diffusion  of 
information,  editing  and  printing  of 
books    and  newspapers,   telegraph 
operators,  etc.,  etc. 

(e)  Pursuit  of  science  and  the  inven- 
tion of  devices  useful   in  the  arts. 


172  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

ADVANTAGES   OP   THE   ERA. 

From  Simon  N.  Patten's  essay  on  the 
consumption  of  wealth,  the  following  is 
taken: — 

"By  the  changes  in  consumption  which 
modern  progress  has  made  possible,  the 
welfare  of  society  has  been  improved  in 
two  important  respects.  Through  a  great 
reduction  in  cost,  many  more  articles  than 
formerly  have  a  low  ratio  of  cost  to  utility, 
and  thus  the  inducement  to  labor  has  been 
greatly  increased.  In  the  second  place, 
the  greater  variety  of  our  wants  allows 
them  to  be  supplied  with  a  smaller  pro- 
portional labor.  For  a  people  with  few 
wants,  all  their  land  must  be  used  to  sup- 
ply these  wants,  even  though  most  of  it  is 
better  fitted  for  other  uses;  while,  with 
every  increase  in  the  variety  of  our  wants, 
all  the  qualities  of  each  soil  and  climate 
can  be  better  utilized.  Were  the  actions 
of  men  controlled  only  by  the  laws  of  hu- 
man nature  and  those  of  the  external 
world,  our  present  economic  condition 


APPENDIX.        }  173 

would  be  greatly  improved.  We  have  in- 
herited a  world  much  better  fitted  for 
supplying  our  wants  than  that  possessed 
by  our  ancestors;  but  along  with  this  bet- 
ter economic  world  have  also  been  in- 
herited laws,  habits,  and  prejudices,  suited 
only  to  the  artificial  surroundings  of  our 
ancestors.  Only  when  our  prejudices  have 
been  removed,  and  our  laws  and  habits 
modified  so  as  to  harmonize  with  our  pres- 
ent environment,  can  we  hope  to  utilize 
all  our  resources  and  to  have  all  that  va- 
riety in  our  consumption  which  a  better 
conformity  to  natural  laws  will  permit. 
We  do  not  need  a  new  world  or  a  new 
man;  but  we  do  need  a  new  society  and  a 
state  whose  power  will  be  superior  to  that 
of  any  combination  of  selfish  individuals, 
and  whose  duties  will  be  commensurate 
with  human  wants. 

The  following  is  from  the  pen  of  Mr. 
Charles  W.  Thomas,  a  well-known  lawyer 
and  student  at  Woodland,  California: 
"  The  *  workingman '  as  presented  in  liter- 
ature is  an  assemblage  of  possibilities  and 


174  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR    BREAD. 

incoherencies.  As  such,  no  general  idea  is 
or  can  be  true  about  him.  In  fact  he  be- 
longs to  no  political  party,  being  moved 
always  in  that  line  by  self  interest.  Much 
of  the  literature  on  the  subject  of  the 
'  workingman '  is  nothing  but  fertilized 
fancy  of  diseased  imagination.  Every 
class  of  persons  has  its  degrees  and  orders. 
"  There  is  a  material  difference  between 
the  tiller  of  the  soil  and  the  worker  of  the 
material.  Generally  speaking,  the  farmer 
is  his  own  master,  laborer,  and  the  recipi- 
ent of  the  products  of  his  toil.  He  is  far 
removed  from  the  centers  of  political 
power  and  partisan  corruption.  He  is 
more  of  the  freeman  and  less  of  the  slave, 
and  therefore  his  condition  in  life  and  his 
relation  to  political  institutions  make  it 
possible  for  him  to  become  the  forgotten 
man.  On  the  other  hand,  the  great  cities 
are  the  radiating  centers  of  journalism,  of 
education,  of  culture,  and  of  commercial 
enterprise ;  which,  for  good  or  bad,  mould 
the  institutions  of  our  country ;  and  so  near 
them  lives  the  i  workingman '  of  a  hand- 


APPENDIX.  175 

icraft,  that  he  cannot  distinguish  their 
trend  for  good  or  evil;  nor  can  he  recog- 
nize the  need  of  political  discipline  to  at- 
tain to  a  contented  citizenship.  He  is 
moved  toward  that  party  which  promises 
relief  from  real  or  imaginary  wrongs. 
He  sees  no  difference  between  statesman- 
ship and  partisanship. 

"  Economists  give  too  much  attention  to 
the  abstract  idea  of  capital  and  labor  and 
too  little  to  the  capitalist  and  the  laborer; 
they  devote  too  much  time  to  the  discus- 
sion of  the  assumed  principles,  and  too 
little  to  the  discussion  of  the  personality  ? 
of  capital  and  labor.  In  the  solution  of 
this  mixed  social  and  political  problem, 
the  tendency  is  to  regard  capital  and  la- 
bor as  inanimate  elements  and  factors. 
There  is  more  in  capital  than  mere  '  bar- 
ren metal/  and  more  in  labor  than  mere 
muscle.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  the  in- 
telligence of  capital ;  and  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  the  intelligence  of  labor.  Edu- 
cation on  the  line  of  contact  is  what  is 
needed.  The  danger  of  disagreement,  is 


176  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR   BREAD. 

nominal  so  long  as  the  relation  of  the 
capitalist  and  laborer  is  direct  and  per- 
sonal. The  greatest  and  most  dangerous 
conflict  comes  when  the  capitalist  is l  seven 
times  removed/  and  the  strained  relation- 
ship of  master  and  servant  is  established 
between  the  servant  under  servant  of 
the  one  master — the  capitalist. " 


OF  T;HE 
UNIVERSITY  ] 

OF 


ALPHABETICAL  INDEX. 


PAGE. 

ABBOTT'S,  Lyman,  Position 97 

Agriculturists,  Number  of 52 

ADAMS,  C.  F.,  on  Railroads 54 

Advertisements  for  Places 17 

Advantages  of  the  Era .  172 

Beef  Cattle,  Growth  of . . .' . .      91 

BROUGHAM  oA  Poverty. 18 

Business  Population  of  U.  S 155 

CLARE'S,  Sister  Frances,  Ideas 81 

Control  of  Railroads 70 

CORTHEL  on  Freights 52 

Co-operative  Associations 43 

CHENEY,  E.  P. ,  on  Capitalists 33 

Combinations,  Evils  of 29 

Complaints,  Cause  of 15 

Complaints  of  the  People 9 

Civilization,  Changes  Made  by 12 

Combination  Destroys  Competition 108 

Culture  Frees  Man 116 

Capital's  Arbitrary  Claims 32,  33 

Competition  among  Railroads 63 

DISCRIMINATIONS  of  Railways 62 

Dexter  on  Co-operative  Societies 43 

Distribution  of  Wealth 34,  35,  36,  37 

Denison  on  Property  Rights ......  10 

J2  (177) 


178  INDEX. 

Discoveries  of  the  Future 128,  9 

Day,  Edward  L.,  on  Profits 139,  141 

Earnings  of  the  People 88 

ELY,  R.  T.,  on  Co-operative  Associations 43 

English  Hard  Times 19 

ERA,  Problems  of  the  9,  10 

Economy,  Motto  of  Private 11 

Expenditures  Enlarged 15 

Early  Vocations 118 

Education  for  New  Pursuits. 121,  7 

Employers,  Stubborn , 1 32 

Equitable  Share  of  Profits 137 

Employers  against  Unions 148,  9 

FERTILITY  of  Soil *. 91 

Farms,  Value  of 83,  84 

Farmers'  Low  Earuiugs 63 

Freight  Receipts  Increased ...     70 

Future  Race,  Demands  of . . .    126 

Freight  Rates 47,  8,  9,  50 

Freights    Suddenly  Increased 50 

Farmers,  How  Robbed 50 

Farmers,  Vast  Number  of 61,  52 

Feudalism,  the  Modern 46 

Factories,  Number  Idle 22 

Fortunes,  Growth  of 13 

GENERALIZATIONS,  Value  of 20 

George's  Ideas 74,  5,  l>,  7,  etc. 

Giffin  on  Wages . ... 42 

Government,  Socialism  of  103 

HARRIS  on  Henry  George 82,  91,  2,  3,  4,  etc. 

Houses,  Value  of  in  U.  S 83 

Highways,  History  of 58 


INDEX.  179 

HUDSON  on  Feudalism 46 

HARRIS,  W.  T.,  on  Price-levels 40,  41 

Howells,  W.  D. ,  on  the  Poor   15 

Hard  Times,  F-icts  about 16 

Higher  Vocations 128 

Howells,  W.  D.,  on  Labor 150 

Harris,  W.  T.,  on  Trades 169,  70,  71 

Illinois,  Wages  in. 45 

INCOME  Taxes 38,  39 

Ingersoll  on  the  Labor  Question 23,  24 

Industrial    Depressions 12,  13 

KENMARE,  the  Nun  of 81 

Kingsbury  on  Workingmen 11 

LANDS  First  Occupied 91 

Law  of  the  Highway  5,  7,  58,  60,  61 

Labor,  Wages  of 45 

Labor,  the  Examiner  Bureau  of 17,  18 

Lockouts  that  Fail ...  20,  21 

Labor,  Divisions  of 14,  119,  120 

Labor  in  the  Future 116 

Labor,  its  War  Methods 145,  6 

Labor's   Blunders 1 48 

MALTHUSIAN  Theory 91 ,  92 

Marx  and  Henry  George 38,  74 

MULHALL  on  Land  Values 84 

MALLOCK  on  Henry  George - 89,  90 

Manhattan  Island's  Value .     90 

Machinery's  Work 44 

Machinery,  Horse-power  of 45 

Mulhall  on  Incomes *. 39,  40 

Machinery  Employs  More  People 41,  42 

Monopoly's  Evils 25 


180  INDEX. 

Machinery  Cheapens  Products 27 

Markets  Cornered 28 

Machinery,  Effects  of 117 

MACAULEY  on  the  Poor 19 

Machinery,  Competition  of 121 

Magnets  that  Do  Work 122 

Monopolies,  G.  W.  JULIAN  on 153,  4 

NATIONALISM,  Growth  of  9,  10 

Necessaries,  Prices  of 40 

New  York,  Labor  in 18 

OVERCAPITALIZED  Eailroads 66 

Old  Times  and  New 11 

PAUPERS,  Number  of 91 

Population,  Increase  of 92 

Property,  the  Function  of 93,  94 

Production  of  the  U.  S 100 

Property  Values  in  the  U.  S 82 

Pennsylvania,  Railroads  in 62 

Products,  Increased  Use  of 42,  3 

Pickard  on  New  Education 44 

Paupers  in  New  York 38 

Poor  Growing  Poorer,   etc 38 

Price-levels,  Value  of 40,  41 

Products,    Cornering  of 28 

Pattison,  Governor,  on  Pools 30,  31 

People  Idle  in  1885 22 

Problems  for  Solution 8 

Profit-sharing 130 

Poor,  Society  to  Care  for 127 

Population,  Number  Who  Work 126 

Pins,  Manufacture  of 124 

Profit-sharing  Agreements. 134 


INDEX.  181 

Profit-sharing,  Examples  of 145,  6 

Profit-sharing  Analyzed 139,   142 

Powell  on  Profit-sharing 144 

Poor  on  Watered  Stock  66 

REED'S,  Homer,  Ideas 80 

Ratio  of  Land  Values 84,  87 

Rent,  Amount  of 84,  85 

Rent,  Per  Capita  of 85,  86 

Railways,  Overcapitalized 66 

Rubbery  by  Railroads 71 

Railway  Mottoes 47 

Railway  Problem  Defined , 47,  56 

Railway,  the  Real  Problem 49 

Rogers  on  Wages 26,  27 

Russian  Communism 107 

Railway  Companies  Fewer 108 

Remedy  against  Machinery 122 

Railway  Data 156,  166 

SOCIALISM,  History  of 104 

Spencer  on  Socialism   105 

Socialism 96 

Socialism  Defined 99 

Spencer  Abandons  Land  Ideas 75 

Stations  with  Competing  Lines 64 

Sovereign  Ownership  of  the  Track 65 

Steam  Engines,  Number  in  Use 45 

Speech,  Excesses  of 24 

Strikes,  Number  of 20 

Statistics,  the  Story  of 16 

Socialists,  Demands  of 137 

Self-interest 138 

Speech,  the  Freedom  of 7 


182  INDEX. 

THOMAS,  C.  W.,  his  Ideas 173,  4,  5 

Trusts 108  to  115 

Train-dispatcher's  Testimony 68,  9 

Traffic,  How  Charged 47 

Transportation,  Reduced  Cost  of 48 

Train  Load,  Increase  of 52,  5o 

Trusts,  Evils  of 32,  167,  168 

Trades,  Evolution  of 118 

Type-setting  Machines 123 

Trusts,  Law  Against 107,  8 

Trusts,  a  Sample  Agreement   1 14 

UNIONS,  Growth  of 131 

Unions,  Evils  and  Benefits  of 147 

Unions,  Tyranny  of 147 

VOCATIONS,   Evolution  of 169,  70,  71 

Village  Community 106,   107 

WAGES,  Harris  on. . . 102 

Wages,  Increase  of 40,  42 

WOMEN,  New  Work  for ^.    119 

Wright,  Carroll  D.,  on  Labor 21 

Workingmen,  Kingsbury's  Ideas  of 11 

Wealth,  Increase  of .  .25,  26 

Wall  Street's  Earnings 26 

Wealth,  Three  Ways  to  Gain  It 27 

Wool,  Increase  of 91 

Woolsey  on  Socialism 98 

Workmen,  Their  Hatred  of  Machines 122 

Workmen,  Fewer  Manual 125 

Workmen,  Too  Much  Power  of 133 

Wages,  Their  Effect  on  Morals 135 

Wright  on  Profit-sharing 141,   143 

Workingmen  in  Literature 173,  4,  5 


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